pancreatic cancer:

Pancreatic cancer is a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. Each year in the United States, about 42,470 individuals are diagnosed with this condition and 35,240 die from the disease. The prognosis is generally poor; less than 5 percent of those diagnosed are still alive five years after diagnosis. Complete remission is still extremely rare. About 95% of exocrine pancreatic cancers are adenocarcinomas (M8140/3). The remaining 5% include adenosquamous carcinomas, signet ring cell carcinomas, hepatoid carcinomas, colloid carcinomas, undifferentiated carcinomas, and undifferentiated carcinomas with osteoclast-like giant cells. Exocrine pancreatic cancers are far more common than endocrine pancreatic cancers (also known as islet cell carcinomas), which make up about 1% of total cases.

Contents:
1 Signs and symptoms
1.1 Presentation
1.2 Predisposing factors
1.2.1 Alcohol
2 Diagnosis
3 Treatment
3.1 Surgery
3.2 Chemotherapy
4 Prognosis
5 Prevention
6 See also
7 References
8 External links



Signs and symptoms;

Presentation:
Pancreatic cancer is sometimes called a "silent killer" because early pancreatic cancer often does not cause symptoms and the later symptoms are usually non-specific and varied.Therefore, pancreatic cancer is often not diagnosed until it is advanced.

Common symptoms include:

Pain in the upper abdomen that typically radiates to the back (seen in carcinoma of the body or tail of the pancreas)
Loss of appetite (anorexia), and/or nausea and vomiting
Significant weight loss
Painless jaundice (yellow skin/eyes, dark urine) when a cancer of the head of the pancreas (about 60% of cases) obstructs the common bile duct as it runs through the pancreas. This may also cause pale-colored stool and steatorrhea.
Trousseau sign, in which blood clots form spontaneously in the portal blood vessels, the deep veins of the extremities, or the superficial veins anywhere on the body, is sometimes associated with pancreatic cancer.

Diabetes mellitus, or elevated blood sugar levels. Many patients with pancreatic cancer develop diabetes months to even years before they are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, suggestion that new onset diabetes in an elderly individual may be an early warning sign of pancreatic cancer.

Clinical depression has been reported in association with pancreatic cancer, sometimes presenting before the cancer is diagnosed. However, the mechanism for this association is not known.

Predisposing factors:
Risk factors for pancreatic cancer include:
Age (particularly over 60)
Male gender
African-American ethnicity
Smoking. Cigarette smoking has a risk ratio of 1.74 with regard to pancreatic cancer; a decade of non-smoking after heavy smoking is associated with a risk ratio of 1.2.
Diets low in vegetables and fruitsDiets high in red meat
Obesity
Diabetes mellitus is both risk factor for pancreatic cancer, and, as noted earlier, new onset diabetes can be an early sign of the disease.
Chronic pancreatitis has been linked, but is not known to be causal. The risk of pancreatic cancer in individuals with familial pancreatitis is particularly high.
Helicobacter pylori infection
Family history, 5–10% of pancreatic cancer patients have a family history of pancreatic cancer. The genes responsible for most of this clustering in families have yet to be identified. Pancreatic cancer has been associated with the following syndromes; autosomal recessive ataxia-telangiectasia and autosomal dominantly inherited mutations in the BRCA2 gene and PALB2 gene, Peutz-Jeghers syndrome due to mutations in the STK11 tumor suppressor gene, hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer (Lynch syndrome), familial adenomatous polyposis, and the familial atypical multiple mole melanoma-pancreatic cancer syndrome (FAMMM-PC) due to mutations in the CDKN2A tumor suppressor gene.Gingivitis or periodontal disease

Alcohol:
It is controversial whether alcohol consumption is a risk factor for pancreatic cancer. Drinking alcohol excessively is a major cause of chronic pancreatitis, which in turn predisposes to pancreatic cancer, but "chronic pancreatitis that is due to alcohol doesn't increase risk as much as other types of chronic pancreatitis."[clarification needed)Overall, the association is consistently weak and the majority of studies have found no association.
Some studies suggest a relationship, with risk increasing with increasing amount of alcohol intake.Risk is greatest in heavy drinkers mostly on the order of four or more drinks per day. But there appears to be no increased risk for people consuming up to 30g of alcohol a day so most of the U.S. consumes alcohol at a level that "is probably not a risk factor for pancreatic cancer.
Several studies caution that their findings could be due to confounding factors.Even if a link exists, it "could be due to the contents of some alcoholic beverages' other than the alcohol itself. One Dutch study even found that drinkers of white wine had lower risk.A pooled analysis concluded, "Our findings are consistent with a modest increase in risk of pancreatic cancer with consumption of 30 or more grams of alcohol per day.

Diagnosis:
Most patients with pancreatic cancer experience pain, weight loss, or jaundice.
Pain is present in 80 to 85 percent of patients with locally advanced or advanced metastic disease. The pain is usually felt in the upper abdomen as a dull ache that radiates straight through to the back. It may be intermittent and made worse by eating. Weight loss can be profound; it can be associated with anorexia, early satiety, diarrhea, or steatorrhea. Jaundice is often accompanied by pruritus and dark urine. Painful jaundice is present in approximately one-half of patients with locally unresectable disease, while painless jaundice is present in approximately one-half of patients with a potentially resectable and curable lesion.

The initial presentation varies according to location of the cancer. Malignancies in the pancreatic body or tail usually present with pain and weight loss, while those in the head of the gland typically present with steatorrhea, weight loss, and jaundice. The recent onset of atypical diabetes mellitus, a history of recent but unexplained thrombophlebitis (Trousseau sign), or a previous attack of pancreatitis are sometimes noted.

Courvoisier sign defines the presence of jaundice and a painlessly distended gallbladder as strongly indicative of pancreatic cancer, and may be used to distinguish pancreatic cancer from gallstones.

Tiredness, irritability and difficulty eating due to pain also exist. Pancreatic cancer is usually discovered during the course of the evaluation of aforementioned symptoms.

Liver function tests can show a combination of results indicative of bile duct obstruction (raised conjugated bilirubin, γ-glutamyl transpeptidase and alkaline phosphatase levels). CA19-9 (carbohydrate antigen 19.9) is a tumor marker that is frequently elevated in pancreatic cancer. However, it lacks sensitivity and specificity. When a cutoff above 37 U/mL is used, this marker has a sensitivity of 77% and specificity of 87% in discerning benign from malignant disease. CA 19-9 might be normal early in the course, and could be elevated due to benign causes of biliary obstruction.Imaging studies, such as computed tomography (CT scan) can be used to identify the location of the cancer. Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) is another procedure that can help visualize the location and can serve to guide a percutaneous needle biopsy, which is necessary to establish a definitive diagnosis.

Treatment:

surgery:Treatment of pancreatic cancer depends on the stage of the cancer.[35] The Whipple procedure is the most common surgical treatment for cancers involving the head of the pancreas. It can only be performed if the patient is likely to survive major surgery and if the cancer is localized without invading local structures or metastasizing. It can therefore only be performed in the minority of cases.

Spleen-preserving distal pancreatectomy can also be used as a method to remove a cancer running through centre of pancreas; this is invasive surgery, resulting in loss of body and tail. Cancers of the tail of the pancreas can be resected using a procedure known as a distal pancreatectomy.[35] Recently, localized cancers of the pancreas have been resected using minimally invasive (laparoscopic) approaches.
After surgery, adjuvant chemotherapy with gemcitabine has in several large randomized studies been shown to significantly increase the 5-year survival.
Surgery can be performed for palliation, if the malignancy is invading or compressing the duodenum or colon. In that case, bypass surgery might overcome the obstruction and improve quality of life, but it is not intended as a cure.

Chemotherapy:
In patients not suitable for resection with curative intent, palliative chemotherapy may be used to improve quality of life and gain a modest survival benefit. Gemcitabine was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1998 after a clinical trial reported improvements in quality of life in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. This marked the first FDA approval of a chemotherapy drug for a non-survival clinical trial endpoint.

Prognosis:
Patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer typically have a poor prognosis partly because the cancer usually causes no symptoms early on, leading to locally advanced or metastatic disease at time of diagnosis. Median survival from diagnosis is around 3 to 6 months; 5-year survival is less than 5%.With 37,170 cases diagnosed in the United States in 2007, and 33,700 deaths, pancreatic cancer has one of the highest fatality rates of all cancers and is the fourth highest cancer killer in the United States among both men and women. Although it accounts for only 2.5% of new cases, pancreatic cancer is responsible for 6% of cancer deaths each year.
Pancreatic cancer may occasionally result in diabetes. Insulin production is hampered and it has been suggested that the cancer can also prompt the onset of diabetes and vice versa. Thus diabetes is both a risk factor for the development of pancreatic cancer and diabetes can be an early sign of the disease in the elderly.


Prevention:
According to the American Cancer Society, there are no established guidelines for preventing pancreatic cancer, although cigarette smoking has been reported as responsible for 20–30% of pancreatic cancers.
The ACS recommends keeping a healthy weight, and increasing consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains while decreasing red meat intake, although there is no consistent evidence that this will prevent or reduce pancreatic cancer specifically.