The two famous men who recently died from pancreatic cancer demonstrate the long way we need to go to improve poor long term survival of this disease.
Perhaps the saddest irony is that both Apple CEO Steve Jobs, wealthy entrepreneur and Dr. Ralph Steinman, a medical researcher, had access to the very latest treatments available. In fact, Dr. Steinman, who won this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine literally days after his death, was working to develop those new therapies- even going so far as to test them on himself.
While the lifetime risk of getting it is only 1.4 percent, unlike breast or colon cancer, pancreatic cancer almost always carries a poor prognosis. That's because with few early symptoms and no current screening tests, it is rarely diagnosed before it spreads to other organs. Even for those who are diagnosed before metastases, there is only a 23 percent five year survival rate.
According to the American Cancer Society, nearly the same number of individuals are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year (around 44,000 in the US in 2011) as die from it (almost 38,000 expected in 2011).
Steinman had the more common form of pancreatic cancer: adenocarcinoma while Steve Jobs had an islet cell tumor which is rarer (only 5 percent of cases) and more slow-growing.
Risk factors for pancreatic cancer include:
-Smoking
-Obesity (a body mass index over 30)
-Diet (high fat, alcohol)
-Previous pancreatic pathology (diabetes, chronic pancreatitis)
-Occupation (coke, metal-gas workers, organic chemists)
-Family history (President Carter has a strong family history with father, brother and 2 sisters who died with pancreatic cancer in the 50's)
Bottom line: In 2011, pancreatic cancer is the tenth most common cancer, but the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths. If the world's loss of two extraordinary men like Jobs and Steinman should do anything, it's to highlight the need for more research to find screening tests for early diagnosis as well as much better treatments that will lead to a real cure.
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