Steve Jobs pancreatic cancer
Celebrity deaths this begs the question, what are the causes, symptoms until the cancer treatments?
Experts call, pancreatic cancer is not one common form of cancer. Yet this cancer is one of the most deadly type of cancer. The disease is extremely aggressive, spreads rapidly and is often not diagnosed until late stages. Treatment options for pancreatic cancer is also relatively small.
As quoted from eMedicine Health, pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Than 38,000 Americans who suffer from this cancer in 2008, 34,000 of them died.
The pancreas is an organ in the upper abdomen near the small intestine, called the duodenum. The pancreas consists of glands with different functions, ie secrete enzymes that help digestion of food in the intestine, secreting hormones including insulin into the bloodstream.
Types of pancreatic cancer
The most common types of pancreatic cancer occurred in glands called exocrine pancreatic adenocarcinoma. While cancer of the endocrine glands called pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoma or islet cell tumors are a rare find.
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is very aggressive and often spread throughout the body when detected. The most widely performed treatment are curative, ie surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or a combination of several treatments at once.
Cause of pancreatic cancer
According to experts, there are several pancreatic cancer key factors including, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, the elderly and more men than women develop this cancer is a disease of other causes of diabetes mellitus and a history of pancreatic cancer in families.
pancreatic cancer symptom
There are several symptoms of pancreatic cancer, including pain in the abdomen, back, or both. Drastically reduced weight due to loss of appetite, anorexia and bloating. Patients also often experience diarrhea with fat content in the stool or steatorrhea.
In people with diabetes may occur with weight loss and nausea, and yellowing skin. The more specific symptoms found in the examination, diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is most likely higher.
When experiencing some symptoms, immediately advised to undergo examination. With the ultrasound scan, doctors can determine the condition of gallstones, pancreas or tumor-like symptoms. Abdominal computed tomography scan also can diagnose the presence of pancreatic cancer.
pancreatic cancer treatment
Treatment depends on stage of disease that is divided into three, namely:
- Local, which is in pancreatic cancer.
Advanced-stage, cancer of the pancreas spreads to the surrounding blood vessels or other organs,
- Metastatic, where the cancer has spread beyond the pancreas to other parts of the body.
Treatment of pancreatic cancer surgery, chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy to reduce the likelihood the cancer will recur.
pancreatic cancer prevention
The doctors have not found the action of pancreatic cancer prevention. But there are some risk factors that can be controlled include smoking and excessive alcohol intake limits.
There are many recent advances in the treatment of pancreatic cancer, but the prognosis of the disease is relatively small. The medical world record, pancreatic cancer patients who underwent surgery, the probability of living in 5 years is 20-30 percent. If the time of surgery, lymph nodes were found to contain cancer, then the probability of living in 5 years decreased to 10 percent.
Pancreatic cancer chemotherapy after surgical removal of the pancreas tends to increase the probability of living in 5 years, but only about 10 percent. But for people with advanced cancer is rarely passed the third year. For people with metastatic, the chance of living for one year less of 20 percent for those undergoing chemotherapy and less than 5 percent for those who choose not to receive chemotherapy.
