How long can an elderly person live with pancreatic cancer

In this age when people are afraid of cancer, once a person is diagnosed with cancer, especially in the late stages, what they often think about is not how to treat it, but how long they can live. Pancreatic cancer is one of the common malignant tumors. The early symptoms are not obvious. Once there are obvious symptoms, they are usually in the middle or late stages. So how long can an elderly person live with pancreatic cancer? Regarding this issue, let's take a closer look at it below.

One of the factors affecting how long patients with advanced pancreatic cancer can live: Treatment options for advanced pancreatic cancer

1. Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is only suitable for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer with limited tumor range. Because radiation lacks selectivity, it can also cause damage to normal cells in the human body. Therefore, radiotherapy should be chosen with caution to treat advanced pancreatic cancer. If radiotherapy is suitable, it should be combined with traditional Chinese medicine treatment to achieve the effect of sensitization and toxicity reduction.

2. Chemotherapy

After pancreatic cancer metastasizes in the late stage, chemotherapy is the main treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer. Metastasis to the liver and gallbladder is also common. Chemotherapy is not particularly sensitive to pancreatic cancer and can produce many side effects. It is not widely used in the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer, but it is also used as a treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer. Chemotherapy has side effects. Combining traditional Chinese medicine treatment during chemotherapy can reduce the dosage of chemotherapy drugs and enhance the treatment effect.

3. Traditional Chinese Medicine Treatment

TCM treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer can take into account the characteristics of the patient's entire body, rather than just the cancer lesions themselves. It can correct certain disorders of the body, remove factors that cause tumor recurrence, and reduce the chance of metastasis. Secondly, Chinese medicine is less harmful to healthy cells, and generally does not cause new damage to physical strength due to the treatment itself. As cancer improves, physical strength will gradually recover and immunity will be gradually enhanced.

4. Biological immunotherapy

Biological immunotherapy is a type of tumor biological immunotherapy and a relatively mature technology in the field of tumor biological therapy. It is the fourth tumor treatment mode after tumor surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which fills the gaps of conventional therapies such as surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. It not only has the function of clearing tiny residual lesions in different parts of the body and preventing tumor recurrence and metastasis, but also has the unique effect of restoring and rebuilding the patient's damaged immune system.

The second factor affecting how long patients with advanced pancreatic cancer can live: How to take good care of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer?

1. Psychological care

Pancreatic cancer patients should maintain a good mental state, build confidence in overcoming the disease, and adopt an optimistic attitude towards life. This is the key to the treatment and rehabilitation of pancreatic cancer patients. Mental factors play a major role in the occurrence, treatment, and recovery of pancreatic cancer.

2. Daily life care

Maintain the regularity of daily life, get up, eat and move around on time, generally choose gentle activities, and increase outdoor activities appropriately. At the same time, you should calm your emotions and avoid being impatient or angry.

3. Dietary considerations

When choosing food, you should focus on a diet that is nutritious, easy to digest, less irritating, and low in fat. Eat more foods containing carbohydrates, such as milk, fish, liver, egg white, fine flour products, lotus root powder, fruit juice, vegetable soup, and glutinous rice.

Avoid overeating, binge drinking, and high-fat, spicy foods.

4. Other considerations

Patients with bad habits such as drinking and smoking should quit and resolutely not get involved again.

The third factor affecting how long patients with advanced pancreatic cancer can live: comprehensive selection of treatment and nursing for advanced pancreatic cancer

There are many treatments for advanced pancreatic cancer. In the late stage of pancreatic cancer, multiple metastases will occur. Local treatments such as surgical resection are not effective. Systemic treatment is more important. Therefore, the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer is a comprehensive treatment combining traditional Chinese and Western medicine. Chemotherapy for advanced pancreatic cancer is not effective in prolonging the patient's survival, but it can alleviate the main symptoms such as advanced cancer pain. The commonly used chemotherapy regimen is the FAM regimen, which is intravenously injected. In addition, the first-line chemotherapy regimen for the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer uses intravenous drip for 30 minutes, 1000 mg/m2, once a week for a total of 7 weeks, and then rest for 1 week, repeating once a week for 3 consecutive weeks and resting for 1 week. Pancreatic cancer can also be targeted and used in combination with the new drug Tarceva, which will greatly improve the survival rate of advanced pancreatic cancer. For the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer without jaundice and very severe pain, local radiotherapy can be considered to relieve pain.

In contrast, among the treatment methods for advanced pancreatic cancer, comprehensive treatment with traditional Chinese medicine is no worse than chemotherapy. If the patient has severe side effects after chemotherapy and cannot tolerate it, comprehensive treatment with traditional Chinese medicine can also be tried. Comprehensive treatment with traditional Chinese medicine includes decoctions based on syndrome differentiation and treatment, intravenous drip of traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese patent medicine, acupuncture and diet therapy. The commonly used drug for advanced pancreatic cancer is Huachansu Tablets. Those who are in good physical condition and have no digestive tract reactions can take Xihuang Pills.

When choosing a treatment method for advanced pancreatic cancer, you must follow your doctor's advice and choose the one that best suits you.