With a
4% survival rate (after 5 years), Pancreatic Cancer has definitely
earned its reputation of being a “bad luck” cancer. Bad luck in the fact that not
only have you learned you have cancer, you have the most deadly cancer there is
(second to liver cancer boasting a 7% survival rate after 5 years) meaning the odds
are most definitely not in your
favor.
The
reason pancreatic cancer is the most deadly has everything to do with the fact
that it generates no real symptoms until it is essentially too late to do
anything about it. The main symptoms include things that many of us feel on an
almost daily basis which does not lead to any alarm. With such mild symptoms as
upper abdominal pain (possibly radiating to the back), loss of appetite, weight
loss (not dramatic until late stage) and depression, it’s feasible that someone
may feel they are overexerting themselves and need to either relax, take some Aleve
or try and power through it to feel better. Certainly these symptoms don’t
bring cancer to mind. It’s often not until jaundice (yellowing of the skin and
eyes due to excess levels of liver waste products) sets in that the person will
actually go to the doctor. By that time the cancer/ tumor has overtaken too
much of the tissue rendering it inoperable or unresectable (meaning there is no
way to cut the tumor out or even cut it back).
The most
common form of pancreatic cancer (>75% of cases) is caused by “adenocarcinoma”
which is a fancy term meaning the cancer started with a glandular cell.
Glandular means it can begin in any gland (an organ that secretes substance(s)
for use in or outside the body (such as sweat, saliva, milk and hormones)).
There are risk factors for this cancer, as with anything, including smoking
(obviously- smoking = everything bad could happen), obesity, adult onset diabetes
and workplace exposure. Alcohol abuse may be directly related to pancreatic
cancer related to the damaging effects on the liver. Those risk factors are the
ones we have control over. The factors we cannot change include age (average diagnosis
age is 71), gender (more common in men than women), family history of the
disease/ genetics (it seems to run in the family) and those with chronic
pancreatitis.
Preexisting
chronic conditions, such as pancreatitis, make it especially difficult to diagnose
pancreatic cancer early on. The lab tests and imaging (X-ray, Cat Scan etc) may
seem abnormal related to those conditions and the diagnostician may not look
much past that. Additionally the early testing for pancreatic cancer can be
terribly inaccurate or very expensive (an MRI can run around $3000.00 if not
covered by insurance and a biopsy would cost about $2000.00 if uncovered;
insurance companies often will not cover something they deem unnecessary and
without many other preliminary tests leading to the diagnosis most insurance
companies will not ok such extravagant testing).
Promisingly,
back in 2012, a young boy named Jack Andraka may have discovered a way to
detect pancreatic cancer very early. Please, link to the story and read more about it (it's much more in depth than I can explain myself).
