Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
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Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#2A reliable early warning system for pancreatic cancer is highly sought after because the disease progresses so quickly once detected. If caught while still confined to the pancreas it can often be cured by surgery, but the large majority of patients are already metastatic before symptoms appear.
The one-year relative survival rate after diagnosis is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. In the US it is the 4th most common cause of death from cancer, and kills more than half a million people per year worldwide.
http://pancreatic.org/pancreatic-cancer/about-the-pancreas/p...
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#3A reliable early warning system for pancreatic cancer is highly sought after because the disease progresses so quickly once detected. If caught while still confined to the pancreas it can often be cured by surgery, but the large majority of patients are already metastatic before symptoms appear. The one-year relative survival rate after diagnosis is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. In the US it is the 4th most comm…
Every time I read about something like this, I wonder how people can make it through medical school without dying of anxiety. So many terminal illnesses that could already be killing you with no early warning signs... how can they sleep!?
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#4A reliable early warning system for pancreatic cancer is highly sought after because the disease progresses so quickly once detected. If caught while still confined to the pancreas it can often be cured by surgery, but the large majority of patients are already metastatic before symptoms appear. The one-year relative survival rate after diagnosis is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. In the US it is the 4th most comm…
What ever happened to the point-of-care test developed by a teenager (Jack Andraka) using CNTs to isolate and test for mesothelin, a potential biomarker for pancreatic cancer?
EDIT: Looks like it's tied up in various patent and testing limbos, the former of which seem somewhat self-imposed. There's also some doubt about the specificity of mesothelin to pancreatic cancer.
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#5A reliable early warning system for pancreatic cancer is highly sought after because the disease progresses so quickly once detected. If caught while still confined to the pancreas it can often be cured by surgery, but the large majority of patients are already metastatic before symptoms appear. The one-year relative survival rate after diagnosis is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. In the US it is the 4th most comm…
What ever happened to the point-of-care test developed by a teenager (Jack Andraka) using CNTs to isolate and test for mesothelin, a potential biomarker for pancreatic cancer? EDIT: Looks like it's tied up in various patent and testing limbos, the former of which seem somewhat self-imposed. There's also some doubt about the specificity of mesothelin to pancreatic cancer.
Ugh, I wonder how we ever make any process nowadays.
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#6A reliable early warning system for pancreatic cancer is highly sought after because the disease progresses so quickly once detected. If caught while still confined to the pancreas it can often be cured by surgery, but the large majority of patients are already metastatic before symptoms appear. The one-year relative survival rate after diagnosis is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. In the US it is the 4th most comm…
Every time I read about something like this, I wonder how people can make it through medical school without dying of anxiety. So many terminal illnesses that could already be killing you with no early warning signs... how can they sleep!?
The anxiety is killing me without being in medical school. Cancer is the worst.
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#7A reliable early warning system for pancreatic cancer is highly sought after because the disease progresses so quickly once detected. If caught while still confined to the pancreas it can often be cured by surgery, but the large majority of patients are already metastatic before symptoms appear. The one-year relative survival rate after diagnosis is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. In the US it is the 4th most comm…
Every time I read about something like this, I wonder how people can make it through medical school without dying of anxiety. So many terminal illnesses that could already be killing you with no early warning signs... how can they sleep!?
It helps to acknowledge the fact that you are constantly dying from something. Everyone's time is finite, and there's very little benefit in chasing the tail of the "If only I'd known about X" dragon, because there will always eventually be an X you don't know about that gets you.
(... at least until we perfect the longevity treatments ;) ).
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#8A reliable early warning system for pancreatic cancer is highly sought after because the disease progresses so quickly once detected. If caught while still confined to the pancreas it can often be cured by surgery, but the large majority of patients are already metastatic before symptoms appear. The one-year relative survival rate after diagnosis is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. In the US it is the 4th most comm…
The most important thing you can do today to prevent pancreatic cancer is.... believe it or not, don't smoke. Smoking causes somewhere around 30% or so cases of pancreatic cancers.
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#9A reliable early warning system for pancreatic cancer is highly sought after because the disease progresses so quickly once detected. If caught while still confined to the pancreas it can often be cured by surgery, but the large majority of patients are already metastatic before symptoms appear. The one-year relative survival rate after diagnosis is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. In the US it is the 4th most comm…
Precisely. It's that "metastatic before symptoms appear" part that gets you.
Pancreatic cancer doesn't generally compromise the pancreas before it metastasizes and compromises something else. That's the worst thing about that one; the first self-identifiable symptom is usually "My stomach is upset (because this thing has already grown past the borders of the pancreas and is now playing general hell with the abdominal cavity)."
Re: Pancreatic cancer from a different perspective
#10This article is a little light on content, but bear in mind that they're only talking about adenocarcinoma pancreatic cancer. There are other tumors of the pancreas including neuroendocrine (aka the Steve Jobs kind) and squamous cell (hyper-rare yet somehow my father ended up with this).
The distinction in important because neuroendocrine can be treated with good outcomes. They're making good progress in treating adenocarcinomas (Drs Von Hoff and Borazanci in Scottsdale making good progress).
Some sort of early detection mechanism for all of these cancers would be amazing for everyone involved.