Because it is important to assess relevant prognostic factors when deciding which patients will profit from pancreatic resection and which will not, 484 patients with ductal pancreatic carcinoma who were operated on between 1 January 1978 and 31 December 1987 in the Department of General and Abdominal Surgery of Mainz Medical School were studied retrospectively. Prognostically favourable factors were: a history of 8 weeks or less, the presence of jaundice, the absence of back pain, a well to moderately differentiated carcinoma, a tumour less than 3 cm in diameter, a preoperative CA19-19 value of less than 400 U/ml, and no sign of lymph node metastases or other metastatic spread. Only 19 patients (3.9%) satisfied these criteria. Our objective is to now check these results in a prospective study with a larger number of patients and, in addition, to compare the quality of life of patients who were treated by resection with that of those who received palliative treatment.