A day after Hall of Fame Football Coach Bobby Bowden, 91, announced that he was suffering from a “terminal medical condition,” his son revealed that condition to be pancreatic cancer.
“The news came out [Wednesday], but we’ve known for about 10 days,” Terry Bowden told reporters Thursday, according to ESPN. “We’ve been preparing for this. We know when you have pancreatic cancer, which is what the disease is, you’re probably talking months, not years, so we know that. We just think we’ve got some more good days ahead, and we’re going to enjoy those together.”
Read MoreFlorida State won two national championships under Bowden and finished in the top five 13 consecutive seasons from 1987-2000.
A four-time college football coach of the year, Bowden had an overall record of 315-98-4, including 21-9 in bowl games, in 34 seasons at Florida State. Only Penn State's Joe Paterno has won more bowl games.
Other recent high profile people who have battled pancreatic cancer include singer Aretha Franklin, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actor Patrick Swayze and actor Michael Landon.
Pancreatic Cancer Treatment
Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease, making it more difficult to successfully treat. It’s also the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States. This cancer is difficult to treat because of the stroma, which is surrounded by cancer cells and creates a barrier that renders it more difficult for medications to access the cancer to kill it.
In a previous interview, Dr. Allyson Ocean, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, explains the stroma. "Think of pancreatic cancer as an oatmeal raisin cookie and the raisins are actually the cancer cells, and the cookie part is actually all the stroma around it," says Dr. Ocean. "And imagine having to navigate through all that stroma for a treatment to be able to get into a cell to kill it. So that's why the treatments just really aren't good enough to penetrate the cancer. But we're improving, we're getting better treatments."
Detecting Pancreatic Cancer Early Is Crucial
Dr. Anirban Maitra from MD Anderson Cancer Center tells SurvivorNet that by the time a patient comes in with symptoms, the disease is often too advanced to treat. "By the time individuals walk into the clinic with symptoms like jaundice, weight loss, back pain, or diabetes, it's often very late in the stage of the disease," he says.
Each year in the United States, about 53,000 patients get pancreatic cancer, "And unfortunately, most will die from this disease within a few months to a year or so from the diagnosis," Dr. Maitra says. "And the reason for that is that most individuals, about 80%, will actually present with what we called advanced disease, which means that the cancer has either spread beyond the pancreas or into other organs like the liver, and so you cannot take it out with surgeries."
Parents, siblings and children of someone with pancreatic cancer are considered at high risk for the disease because they are first-degree relatives of the individual. In 2020, the American Gastroenterological Association updated its clinical guidelines for pancreatic cancer screening in high-risk individuals. At the top of the list of best practices was that screening should be considered in first-degree relatives of patients with pancreatic cancer.
"It's important for people to know there is something you can do," says Jessica Everett, the study author and a genetic counselor at NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center. "If you're concerned about pancreatic cancer in your family, start by talking to a genetic counselor to learn more about your risk and what options you have."
You may be considered high risk of developing pancreatic cancer if you carry pathogenic germline variants (PGVs) relevant to pancreatic cancer risk. A PGV is a change in a reproductive cell (sperm or egg) that becomes part of the DNA in the cells of the offspring. Germline variants are passed from parents to their children, and are associated with increased risks of several cancer types, including pancreatic, ovarian and breast cancers. Germline mutations in ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CKDN2A, PALB2, PRSS1, STK11, and TP53 are associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
