Is it an epidemic – pancreatic cancer?
Submitted by Dr.Kattlove’s Cancer Blog
Recently I was called by a friend of a friend to ask about his wife’s pancreatic cancer treatment. He was wondering whether the care she was receiving at Kaiser Permanente was good enough. It was, I told him. His wife had been handled properly. When she began complaining of pain and weight loss, she had the proper x-rays. Then to make sure she wasn’t curable with surgery they did a laparoscopic procedure. With this approach, they could see if it had spread or whether it could be removed surgically. That would be a very big operation.
Unfortunately, it had spread and curative surgery was not an option. If she were a candidate for surgery, then the quality and experience of the surgeon and the surgical team would be crucial and Kaiser might not be the best option – but it is tough to judge.
It seems that I am hearing a lot about pancreatic cancer these days. The actor, Patrick Swayze has been in the news because of his pancreatic cancer and just this last week I read the obituary of Ronald Davis, a former president of the American Medical Association who had died of the disease. And, a former college friend is caring for his wife, who was diagnosed with this disease this year. I shouldn’t be so surprised. It isn’t an uncommon disease. Nearly 38,000 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year.
Now Swayze has lived over a year with the cancer and is still working on his TV show for next year. Davis lived only a few months after his diagnosis. Why the discrepancy? No one knows. Treatment hasn’t helped much. A small number of people with this cancer, probably less than 5 percent, can be cured by surgery. The rest are either too old or feeble to withstand the huge operation needed, or more often, have widespread disease.
Although there has been some help in treating patients with a widespread disease, the results haven’t been mind-boggling. In the best of cases, that is people treated in clinical trials, half the patients are dead within 8 months. For patients who were really in great condition, half of them made it 10 months. That’s it. But in all cancer treatments, there are winners who have a terrific response – Swayze may be one of these – and losers who don’t respond to treatment – Davis may have been one of these. There are some newer drugs of the non-chemotherapy growth inhibiting (and expensive) type, but these haven’t made a big dent in the mortality figures.
A few weeks ago, I had to detour my bicycle around a race “for the cure” sponsored by the Lustgarten foundation. This charity to support research in pancreatic cancer was named after its founder, an executive, who also died of the disease. Although they aim to support research, their website reveals a lot of hope, but little progress. Not their fault.
This is a tough disease to fight. It hits mostly older folk although it can, in rare occasions, run in families and affect younger people. But we can all lower our risk. Obesity is a risk factor, smoking another one – Swayze still hasn’t kicked the habit. Unfortunately, because of our ignorance of the cause of this disease, the biggest risk factor is just plain bad luck. And, it’s not an epidemic. The chance of being diagnosed with this cancer is the same today as it was in 1975. We are just seeing more because there are more of us “elderly”, the group most likely to get pancreatic cancer.
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