Disclosure
malignancy
PANCREATIC CANCER
Dear EditorWe thank Sharon Barker The RCT that included the patients in question was conducted between 2015 and 2019, at which time the exciting prehabilitation concept had not yet gained widespread support. Accordingly, patients were not involved in any specific prehabilitation programme leading up to surgery and were only given general preoperative recommendations of smoking cessation and regular exercise. However, the recommendations were the same regardless of group allocation. The socioeconomic status of the patients, which would have been an important addition to further investigate quality of life results, was unfortunately not included in the study plan and was not available for these analyses. The randomized nature of the study has hopefully helped to divide any socioeconomic differences equally between groups, but as it is a relatively small study size this cannot be taken for granted.We are fully in agreement with the authors about the need to further investigate the quality of life after minimally invasive distal pancreatectomy in patients with pancreatic cancer, and hopefully the newly closed DIPLOMA (distal pancreatectomy, minimally invasive or open, for malignancy) trial (ISRCTN44897265; The authors declare no conflict of interest.