by Dr Pandula Siribaddana

Created on: October 02, 2009   Last Updated: October 03, 2009

Pancreatic cancer is one of the five major causes for cancer related deaths in United States and generally has a poor prognosis. The reason for the poor prognosis is its subtle nature in development and thus the late diagnosis.

Even though the cancer research in areas pertaining to pancreatic cancer has grown with each decade, it has not shown any substantial improvement for the last 30 years. As a matter of fact, the comparative growth in research pertaining to pancreatic cancer is far less than other fields of clinical research.

Pancreatic cancer usually affects the head of the pancreas, surrounding lymph nodes and other related tissues. The finding of a tumor confined to the pancreas itself is relatively rare, only 10%, and in most instances at the time of the diagnosis it has spread to other structures as well.

Because of the late diagnosis as well as its ability to spread, the 5 year survival rate of a cancer patient is about 5%. It is estimated that the one year survival rate for these patients is around 20%.

At present, the condition is being treated mainly through surgery and to a lesser extent through chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The surgical option will be made use of in instances where the dissemination of the cancer has not taken place (stage I) or if the tumor is severely affecting the functioning of the intestinal tract by causing a blockage. If the tumor is relatively large or the patient is unable to tolerate the surgical procedure, surgeons generally would not undertake the surgical option as the first line of treatment. In such instances, the chemotherapy or radiotherapy would be beneficial and in certain instances a combination of therapies has been used.

In patients who are undergoing surgical treatment, the average survival rate is around 18 - 20 months. Following treatment, the 5 year survival rate increases to 10% and in certain instances, if the tumor can be completely excised, the survival rates can be as high as 20 - 25%. The researchers have further illustrated how the tumor size does affect the survival rate and they conclude that smaller the size of the tumor better the prognosis of that patient.

Whipple procedure or Modified Whipple procedure is the surgical option that has been made use of for the treatment of pancreatic cancer and is a complex surgery which requires skill as well as experience. It has been found that, centers performing more Whipple procedures annually are having higher success rates than the other centers purely because of there expertise.

But, all is not lost as cancer research is focusing on different treatment options and ways of improving the survival rates each and every second. Therefore, in the near future, we will be able to extend our rates of 5 year survival regarding pancreatic cancer, raising hopes of millions of people worldwide.

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