Apple founder and former president of Apple,Steve Jobs, has died after a long struggle for an eight-year fight against pancreatic cancer. Jobs died at the age of 56, October 5, 2011. Previously, the actors ‘Ghost' Patrick Swayze diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and also died in March 2008.
According to experts, pancreatic cancer is not one common form of cancer. This cancer is one of the most deadly type of cancer. The disease is extremely aggressive, spreads rapidly and is often not diagnosed until late stages. Treatment options for pancreatic cancer is also relatively small.
Quoted from eMedicine Health, pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Than 38,000 Americans who suffer from this cancer in 2008, 34,000 of them died.
The pancreas is an organ in the upper abdomen near the small intestine, called theduodenum. The pancreas consists of glands secreting function of enzymes that help digestion of food in the intestine, secreting hormones including insulin into the bloodstream.
Steve Jobs
Types of pancreatic cancer
The most common type of pancreatic cancer occurred in glands called exocrine pancreatic adenocarcinoma. While cancer of the endocrine glands called pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoma or islet cell tumors are a rare find.
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is very aggressive and often suda spread throughout the body when detected. The most widely performed treatment are curative, ie surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or a combination of several treatments at once.
Pancreatic Cancer Causes
According to experts, there are several key factors including pancreatic cancer, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, the elderly and more men than women develop this cancer is a disease of other causes of diabetes mellitus and a history of pancreatic cancer in families.
Symptoms of pancreatic cancer
There are several symptoms of pancreatic cancer, including pain in the abdomen, back, or both. Drastically reduced weight due to loss of appetite, anorexia and bloating. Patients also often experience diarrhea with fat content in the stool (steatorrhea).
In people with diabetes, may be accompanied by drastic weight loss, nausea, and yellowing skin. The more specific symptoms found in the diagnosis, pancreatic cancer is most likely higher.
When experiencing some symptoms, immediately advised to undergo examination. With the ultrasound scan, doctors can determine the condition of gallstones, pancreas or tumor-like symptoms. Abdominal computed tomography scan (CT) also can diagnose the presence of pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic Cancer
Pancreatic Cancer Treatment
Treatment depends on stage of disease are divided into:
- Local, which is in pancreatic cancer.
- Advanced-stage, cancer of the pancreas spreads to the surrounding blood vessels or other organs
- Metastatic, where the cancer has spread beyond the pancreas to other parts of the body.
Treatment of pancreatic cancer are surgery, chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy to reduce the likelihood the cancer will recur (adjuvant therapy).
Prevention of Pancreatic Cancer
The doctors have not found the action of pancreatic cancer prevention. But there are some risk factors that can be controlled include smoking and excessive alcohol consumption limit.
There are many recent advances in the treatment of pancreatic cancer, but the prognosis of the disease is relatively small. The medical world record, pancreatic cancer patients who underwent surgery, the probability of living in 5 years is 20-30 percent. If the time of surgery, lymph nodes were found to contain cancer, then the probability of living in 5 years decreased to 10 percent.
Cancer chemotherapy after surgical removal of the pancreas tends to increase the probability of living in 5 years, but only about 10 percent. But for people with advanced cancer is rarely passed the third year. For people with metastatic, the chance of living for one tahunkurang of 20 percent for those undergoing chemotherapy and less than 5 percent for those who choose not to receive chemotherapy.
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James Brian
I am a blogger who is interested in health issues, you can find and read my writing here(show bio)
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