The Pancreatic Cancer Problem

Introduction

Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease. It’s also hard to understand and diagnose. This post will help you learn more about this disease, so that you can begin to take action against it if you’ve been diagnosed or are worried about your risk of developing it.

Most people with pancreatic cancer discover it very late in its progression, when it is hard to treat.

Most people with pancreatic cancer discover it very late in its progression, when it is hard to treat.

Pancreatic cancer is often misdiagnosed and can be difficult to treat because early symptoms are vague and often overlooked. By the time most people seek medical care, they have advanced-stage disease that cannot be cured by surgery alone.

Pancreatic cancer is often misdiagnosed in the first place.

  • Pancreatic cancer is often misdiagnosed in the first place. Many of its symptoms are vague, easily mistaken for other conditions.
  • When pancreatic cancer is suspected, patients may not be given an accurate diagnosis or their illness may be dismissed as something else, such as indigestion or stress.
  • Symptoms reported to a doctor (or ignored entirely) are often not taken seriously because they are not considered dangerous enough — especially since those symptoms could just be caused by something else entirely.

Pancreatic cancer has a high mortality rate because of its tendency to metastasis.

Pancreatic cancer is hard to treat because it metastasizes. When a tumor grows, it may spread from the organ in which it originated to other parts of the body. This process is called metastasis and it makes pancreatic cancer particularly deadly.

The pancreas is responsible for producing enzymes that break down food into nutrients that can be absorbed by the body. It also produces insulin, which regulates blood sugar levels by helping cells absorb glucose from our bloodstreams in order to use this energy source for their normal functions (like keeping us alive). It’s not surprising then that when someone has pancreatic cancer they often experience weight loss because their body isn’t able to digest food properly; together with chronic pain caused by inflammation around nerves at sites where tumors have spread into nearby tissue paths along nerve pathways throughout your gastrointestinal system both these symptoms make life very difficult for patients who suffer them every day.”

A lot of myths abound about pancreatic cancer and screening for it.

Pancreatic cancer is often misdiagnosed in the first place. While it’s not easy to detect, it often spreads so quickly that by the time you know what’s happening, it’s too late to do anything about it. The patient’s life expectancy is usually less than six months after diagnosis, which means that most people won’t live long enough to have surgery or chemotherapy treatments if they go through with those options.

The high mortality rate due to metastasis of pancreatic cancer means that there isn’t a reliable screening test available yet for this type of cancer either—not one approved by the Food and Drug Administration at least. This can make diagnosis even more difficult because many symptoms overlap with other conditions such as chronic pancreatitis (CP) or benign tumors such as gastrinomas; however, some symptoms may be unique enough for doctors who are familiar with them on an individual basis—you might not know exactly what your symptoms mean until you’ve seen multiple doctors over time under different settings (such as an emergency room visit versus regular checkups).

Early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer saves lives.

Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease, but early diagnosis can help you get treatment and live longer.

Pancreatic cancer screening can be done during an annual physical exam or with specific tests such as:

  • Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan
  • Computed tomography (CT) scan of abdomen and pelvis

Conclusion

I have spent a lot of time and effort studying pancreatic cancer. It’s important because it’s one of the most lethal cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of less than 5%. But we can do better! The key is early detection and treatment before the disease progresses too far. We need more research into how to detect this disease sooner so that patients are diagnosed earlier in its course—well before metastasis occurs.