Background: Resectable pancreatic cancer patients often present with obstructive jaundice necessitating the placement of biliary stents or percutaneouse drainage catheters. We sought to evaluate whether preoperative biliary drainage affects recurrence and survival. Methods: An IRB-approved study was conducted on our institutional tumor registry to identify pancreatic cancer patients who were treated with upfront surgery between 2000 and 2012. Patients were then stratified by preoperative use of endoscopically placed stents (ERCP), percutaneous catheters (PTC), or no biliary drainage (NBD). The primary endpoint was overall survival (OS). Survival curves were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method and the log-rank test. Multivariate analysis (MVA) was performed with a Cox regression model. Results: We identified 202 patients for the study (21 PTC; 89 ERCP; 92 NBD). Key differences between the 3 groups were mean pathologic tumor size (p=0.005), pathologic T3/4 (p =0.01), and pathologic N1 (p=0.007) status, with more aggressive pathologic features in PTC patients. PTC patients had a non-significant increase in rate of hepatic recurrences compared with ERCP and NBD patients (47.4% vs. 26.6% vs. 28.7%, respectively; p=0.20). PTC patients also had worse median and 3 year survival (21 months and 16%) compared to ERCP (23.3 months and 39%) and NBD patients (29 months and 45%, p=0.02). MVA revealed that PTC was an independent predictor of worse overall survival (HR 2.3[95% CI 1.3-4.0], p=0.005), along with pathologic tumor size (HR 1.1[1.0-1.3], p=0.008), nodes positive (HR 1.1[1.1-1.2], p=0.001), and post-operative CA19-9 >90 (HR 2.6[1.5-4.4], p=0.001). Conclusions: Patients with resectable pancreatic cancer who require a pre-operative PTC drain had a non-significant increase in hepatic recurrence rate and worse overall survival than patients who either had an ERCP stent placed or no biliary decompression prior to surgery. Given their worse prognosis, patients who require PTC placement might also benefit from neoadjuvant treatment with restaging prior to surgery.