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Are you at risk for pancreatic cancer?
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Are you at greater risk of dying from pancreatic cancer or the flu? In most years it's the flu.
It seems like pancreatic cancer is all over the news. Just this week we learned that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on the Supreme Court, is doing well after her operation for early pancreatic cancer. Randy Paunch gave a face and a voice to this deadly cancer through his Last Lecture. Patrick Swayze and Steve Jobs have waged a public battle with this illness.
Fortunately, your risk for pancreatic cancer is a very low; pancreatic cancer is very rare. Unfortunately, pancreatic cancer is very deadly. It spreads rapidly, and is rarely detected early.
Pancreatic cancer strikes about 30,000 people each year. When it's diagnosed late, as is so often the case, only one out of twenty will be alive in five years. Detected early it jumps to one in four. Justice Ginsberg's cancer was detected during a screening CT scan that's part of her follow-up care to a colon cancer treated in 1999.
Of those who get pancreatic cancer, many are smokers, heavy drinkers or members of families with a genetic cancer predisposition. You can keep yourself healthy by abstaining from smoking and heavy drinking.
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