EARLY SIGNS OF PANCREATIC CANCER
ARE THERE ANY?
When I was working on one of my blogging articles about hypertension treatment and discovery of a new diabetes, it reminded me one of our good friends who suddenly become diabetic, without having any risk factor for diabetes. She started to lose weight and died within few months of pancreatic cancer.
I knew from my medical studies and practice of medicine that there are no early signs or screening tests for early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. I wondered if a sudden onset of diabetes in a middle age or elderly person could be considered an early sign of pancreatic cancer?
To catch or diagnose pancreatic cancer in an early stage is always a lucky accident, when an abdominal scan done for any other reason accidentally discover a small growth in the pancreas, or if a patient is lucky enough that the pancreatic cancer starts in the middle of pancreas where insulin is produced by Langerhans tissues and patient become diabetic. Or sometimes cancer start in the head of the pancreas, where pancreatic ducts join the biliary duct and jointly drain their secretions of bile and digestive juices and enzymes into the duodenum (small bowel). In that case, the early appearance of jaundice could become an early sign of pancreatic cancer. Only early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is amenable to surgical cure.
The reason pancreatic cancer remains asymptomatic for a long time until it grows enough to invade the adjacent organs, is its location. Pancreas is a big salivary gland located behind the stomach, in front of the spine, extending between the liver and the spleen. So, cancer has a lot of empty space to grow before it causes any symptoms. At that time, it is already too late to operate since the cancer has spread all over the place.
The exact cause of pancreatic cancer is not known but is one of the deadliest cancers. Early diagnosis is the only hope for cure. Pancreatic cancer is the 4th leading cause of cancer deaths in the world.
There are some risk factors that increase the risk of pancreatic cancer which can be listed as follows: smoking, alcoholism, pancreatitis, old age (2/3 of cancer occur in those elder than 65), positive family history, type 2 diabetes, obesity, presence of BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 genes that are often associated with breast and ovarian cancers in women.
An interesting study from the University of New Zealand showed that when researchers examined 140,000 people with type 2 diabetes or pancreatitis or both, and followed them for years, they found that those who develop diabetes after an acute attack of pancreatitis were seven times more likely to develop pancreatic cancer than others with type 2 diabetes.
So, it appears that in order to diagnose pancreatic cancer in an early stage, we doctors have to screen and examine those patients with risk factors much more closely and often that include abdominal scanning.
