Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic Cancer

The pancreas is an organ in the upper abdomen near the small intestine, called the duodenum. The pancreas consists of glands with different functions, among others secrete enzymes that help digestion of food in the intestine, secreting hormones including insulin into the bloodstream.

Types of pancreatic cancer:

The most common type of pancreatic cancer occurred in exocrine gland called the pancreas adenocarcinoma. While cancer of the endocrine glands is called neuroendocrine carcinoma of the pancreas or islet cell tumor is a rare find.

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is very aggressive and often spread throughout the body suda when detected. Treatment of the most widely performed curative, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or a combination of several treatments at once.

Cause

According to experts, there are several major risk factor for pancreatic cancer include, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, the elderly, and more men than women develop this cancer cause is disease Diabetes mellitus and the presence of a family history of pancreatic cancer.

Symptom

There are several symptoms of pancreatic cancer, including pain in the abdomen, back, or both. Weight loss is greatly reduced due to loss of appetite, anorexia, and bloating. Patients also frequently experience diarrhea with fat in the stool (steatorrhea).

In diabetics, possibly accompanied by a drastic weight loss, nausea, and skin yellowing. The more specific symptoms found in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is most likely higher.

When experiencing some of these symptoms, immediately suggested tests. With ultrasound scan, doctors can determine the condition of gallstones, pancreas or tumor-like symptoms. Scan abdominal computed tomography (CT) can also diagnose the presence of pancreatic cancer.

Treatment

Treatment depends on the stage of the disease is divided into three, namely:

Locally, where the cancer is in the pancreas,

Advanced stage, the cancer has spread from the pancreas to the surrounding blood vessels or other organs,

Metastatic, where the cancer has spread outside the pancreas to other parts of the body.

Treatment of pancreatic cancer include surgery, chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy to reduce the likelihood of the cancer will recur (adjuvant therapy).

Prevention

The doctors have yet to find pancreatic cancer prevention. However, there are some risk factors that can be controlled include smoking and limiting excessive alcohol intake.

There are many recent advances in the treatment of pancreatic cancer, but the prognosis of the disease is relatively small. Documented in the medical world, pancreatic cancer patients who underwent surgery, the probability of living in 5 years is 20-30 per cent. If the time of surgery, the lymph nodes were found to contain cancer, the probability of living in 5 years dropped to 10 percent.

Chemotherapy after pancreatic cancer surgery tends to increase the probability of living in 5 years, but only about 10 percent. But for people with advanced cancer rarely passes its third year. For people with metastatic, a chance to live for one tahunkurang of 20 percent for those who underwent chemotherapy and less than 5 percent for those who choose not to receive chemotherapy.

Sources: kimiafarmaapotek.com