Objective To investigate the clinical and pathological prognostic factors of the carcinoma of the body and tail of the pancreas.Methods The clinical data of 64 patients with the carcinoma of the body and tail of the pancreas who received radical resection at the Cancer Hospital of Tianjin Medical University from January 1998 to December 2008 were retrospectively analyzed.Abdominal ultrasound,computed tomography and tumor markers detection were carried out preoperatively to learn the condition of the patients.No patient received neoadjuvant therapy before operation,and chemotherapy,biotherapy and radiotherapy were applied to all the patients after radical resection.Indicators including the gender,age,onset of back pain,site,diameter and differentiation of tumors,operative procedure,lymph node metastasis,metastatic rate of lymph nodes,extra-and intra-pancreatic neural invasion,splenic artery invasion,splenic vein invasion,retroperitoneal soft tissue infiltration,venulae infiltration and TNM staging were collected.The survival curve was drawn by Kaplan-Meier method,and the survival was analyzed by Log-rank test.Univariate and multivariate analysis were carried out by chi-square test and COX proportional hazards model,respectively.Results All patients received R0 resection,and the mean number of lymph node resected was 15 (range,12-22).There were 5 patients with pancreatic leakage,3 with delayed gastric emptying,1 with peritoneal infection,and 1 with deep venous thrombosis,no perioperative mortality was detected.All the 64 patients were with ductal adenocarcinoma and cystadenocarcinoma,and 9 patients were with high differentiated tumor,35 with moderate differentiated tumor and 20 with low differentiated tumor.There were 4 patients with tumor in the TNM IA stage,9 in the TNM IB stage,17 in the TNM Ⅱ A stage and 34 in the TNM Ⅱ B stage.Twenty-six patients died of tumor local recurrence and 18 died of tumor distal metastasis.The 1-,3-,5-year survival rates were 42.2％,17.2％ and 15.6％,respectively,and the median survival time was 19.0 months.The result of univariate analysis showed that back pain,maximum tumor diameter,differentiation,lymph node metastasis,metastatic rate of lymph nodes,extra-pancreatic neural invasion,splenic artery invasion and TNM staging were factors affecting prognosis (x2=10.658,8.371,18.910,6.605,28.382,14.571,19.476,32.155,P ＜0.05).The result of multivariate analysis showed that tumor differentiation,metastatic rate of lymph nodes,extra-pancreatic neural invasion,splenic artery invasion,TNM staging were the independent factors affecting prognosis (RR =2.509,2.107,6.692,5.109,4.784,P ＜ 0.05).Conclusion Tumor differentiation,metastatic rate of lymph nodes,extra-pancreatic neural invasion,splenic artery invasion and TNM staging are the risk factors affecting the prognosis of carcinoma of the body and tail of the pancreas.