Every type of cancer is different, that’s why treatment strategies differ from cancer to cancer. However, one thing that they do all have in common is that the earlier they’re found, the higher the chance of successfully treating them. Pancreatic cancer is no different. And with a five year survival rate of just nine percent, it’s vital that it’s caught as early as possible. Nearly 57,000 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year.
Although pancreatic cancer survival rates have been improving for decades, it’s still considered to be largely incurable. An exception to this is if the tumor is still small enough and localized enough to be operated on. As most pancreatic cancers are particularly aggressive and progress rapidly, this means we need to catch them early.
Read More There are challenges to this. As the pancreas is deep inside the body, a tumor on it isn’t as readily detectable as say, a melanoma on somebody’s face, but there are symptoms that could point to pancreatic cancer. These include jaundice, weight loss, back pain and diabetes. Of course, these aren’t just symptoms for pancreatic cancer, but could mean a host of other diseases instead. The thankfully low incidence of pancreatic cancer means that they probably are a sign of something else, but if two or more members of your family have had pancreatic cancer, or if you have pancreatic cysts, then you’re at high risk, and it’s worth asking your doctor to check for pancreatic cancer.
Up to ten percent of pancreatic cancer cases are caused by inherited genetic syndromes. One of the main reasons that pancreatic cancer is so deadly is that it often isn’t caught in time. Around eighty percent of pancreatic cancer patients already have advanced disease by the time they’re diagnosed, severely limiting treatment options. Just twenty percent of patients have their cancer caught early enough to make them a candidate for surgery, the only way that pancreatic cancer can currently be cured. As Dr. Anirban Maitra, co-leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains, “This has an impact on the prognosis of the disease, because patients who have advanced disease, the treatments we have available for them, they work somewhat, but they don’t really do as well as we would like for them to have an impact.”
Early detection then, is vital to give you the best chance possible of beating pancreatic cancer. If you’re at high risk, and you suspect something might be wrong, there are tests that can be performed to see whether you might have pancreatic cancer. An endoscopic ultrasound or an MRI scan are two common ways of doing this, and doctors have been known to find early and treatable pancreatic cancers using both of these tests. Studies have been conducted on a blood test for pancreatic cancer, and although this looks very promising, more tests are needed, and at the moment an ultrasound and MRI are still the best widely available tests we have.
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Dr Anirban Maitra is co-leader of Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center and Scientific Director at the Sheikh Ahmed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research in Houston, TX. Read More
