Why should we be alert to pancreatic cancer

A 48-year-old middle-aged man felt upper abdominal discomfort, back pain, decreased appetite, fullness after meals, and indigestion six months ago. He took general stomach medicine and digestive drugs, but the effect was not obvious, and the symptoms were sometimes mild and sometimes severe. Three months later, his appetite decreased, his body became thinner, and his skin and eyes turned yellow. He went to the hospital for examination and was diagnosed with icteric hepatitis and was sent to the infectious disease department for isolation treatment. After a month of hospitalization, not only did the jaundice not subside, but it became more and more severe, and he lost 8 kilograms. The surgical consultation believed that it was obstructive jaundice, and when the abdominal cavity was opened during the operation, it turned out to be advanced pancreatic cancer.

Why is pancreatic cancer difficult to detect? It turns out that the pancreas is located at the back of the upper abdomen. It is an organ in the human body that secretes pancreatic juice to help digestion and insulin to promote sugar metabolism. It is divided into the head, body and tail of the pancreas. The stomach and transverse colon are in front of it, the duodenum embraces it on the right, and the spleen is close to the left. The pancreas is small in size and located deep. At the same time, the signs of early pancreatic cancer are less typical, such as loss of appetite, indigestion, stomach pain and upper abdominal distension, which can easily be mistaken for stomach problems. By the time weight loss and jaundice appear, most of them have entered the middle and late stages. So, can some more advanced instruments diagnose pancreatic cancer early? Not necessarily. Especially when the diameter of pancreatic cancer is small, it is difficult to detect cancer with advanced diagnostic instruments such as gastric and duodenal barium meal contrast X-rays and CT, nuclear magnetic resonance tomography, isotope scanning or B-ultrasound imaging. Examinations such as duodenal endoscopy or pancreatic artery angiography cannot effectively display small early cancers. This is why early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is difficult.

Pancreatic cancer is not only difficult to diagnose in its early stages, but also difficult to treat. Among digestive tract cancers, although the incidence of pancreatic cancer is lower than that of esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, intestinal cancer, and liver cancer, it is highly degenerative. Even with surgical resection, the five-year survival rate is only 3-5%. This is because pancreatic cancer grows rapidly, easily invades surrounding tissues and organs, and spreads through the blood.