Pancreatic cancer is a disease with a high degree of malignancy and a poor prognosis (i.e., short survival time). In the United States, pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cancer-related cause of death. Even with surgical resection, the 5-year survival rate is only about 20 percent. For this disease with a poor prognosis, does it still make sense to operate again if it recurs? In response to this question, surgeons at the prestigious National Cancer Medical Center of the University of Heidelberg in Germany conducted a study on this issue. They studied 30 patients who were reoperated after recurrence of pancreatic cancer between 2001 and 2005, with a median time to recurrence of 12 months. 15 of these patients underwent resection of the recurrent tumor, while the other 15 had only palliative dissection or only exploratory surgery. The median survival time for all recurrent patients studied was 29 months, and the median survival time after the first recurrent surgery was 11.4 months. The median survival time was 17 months for patients who had resection and 9.4 months for those who had short-circuit or exploratory surgery. Although there was no statistical difference, there was a trend toward longer survival time for patients who had resection compared with those who did not (P = 0.084). Survival time after surgery was significantly longer if tumor recurrence was greater than 9 months (median survival time was 17 months) than in patients with tumor recurrence of less than 9 months (median survival time was 17 months) (P = 0.004). There was no significant difference in the incidence of perioperative complications and mortality between resected and unresected patients. That is, re-excision is relatively safe after recurrence of pancreatic cancer. Although there were no satisfactory results for prolonged survival after surgery, reoperation after recurrence would benefit patients in specific patients. The requirements for these specific patients in the article are: age preferably less than 65 years; time interval of tumor recurrence greater than 9 months; preoperative PET-CT should be done to confirm no distant metastases; and preoperative CA19-9 should not be too high. Our department has also performed resection of recurrent tumors after adequate evaluation of patients with postoperative recurrence of pancreatic cancer, and the patient is now 1 year and 2 months after the second surgery and is still alive with no signs of recurrence during follow-up.