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: The era of randomized controlled trials was ushered in by the British epidemiologist-statistician Austin Bradford Hill, with his work on the use of streptomycin in patients with tuberculosis. John L. Cameron, can be linked to 16 prospective clinical trials over his career thus far, starting with alternate-allocation trials and transitioning to prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled trials. These trials studied various topics in surgery-from pancreatitis to surgical site infections, to drain trials, a trial in Crohn disease and multiple trials in pancreatic surgery and cancer. Herein are described the "sweet sixteen" prospective clinical trials of Dr Cameron.

In 1991 a multidisciplinary group consisting of surgeons, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, pathologists, research nurses, and laboratory scientists was organized at the Johns Hopkins Hospital to accelerate progress in understanding the clinical and basic biology of pancreatic carcinoma and to develop research protocols aimed at improving clinical outcomes. This article discusses the studies, data, and conclusions generated to date, in some cases preliminarily, for the clinical trials and algorithms the Johns Hopkins team applied to the postoperative adjuvant management of periampullary pancreatic and nonpancreatic periampullary adenocarcinomas during the interval 1991 to 2003.