Pancreatic Cancer

According to Professor John Neoptolemos, "There are approximately 7,000 new cases each year - but it is one of the most lethal cancers." The main reason for the low survival rate from pancreatic cancer is due to its difficulty in finding this cancer early. By the time a person has symptoms, the cancer has often reached a large size and spread to other organs. Because the pancreas is deep inside the body, the doctor cannot see or feel tumors during a routine physical exam. There are currently no blood tests or other tests that can easily find this cancer early in people without symptoms. Tests for certain genes in people with a family history of the disease can help tell if they are at higher risk for cancer. There are some new tests for finding pancreatic cancer early in people with a strong family history of the disease, but these tests are complicated and expensive. Some symptoms of pancreatic cancer include jaundice, a yellow color of the eyes and skin caused by a substance buildup in the liver, pain in the belly area or in the middle of the back, significant weight loss over a number of months, loss of appetite, digestive problems including nausea, vomiting, pain that tends to be worse after eating, a swollen gallbladder that is enlarged, blood clots that form in the veins or cause problems with fatty tissue under the skin, and diabetes. If the doctor has any reason to suspect pancreatic cancer, certain tests will be done to see if the disease is really

One gland which has an important role in the endocrine system is the pancreas which is an organ in the upper abdomen. The pancreas has two main functions the pancreas excretes enzymes to break down proteins, lipids and carbohydrates and nucleic acids in food therefore functions as an exocrine gland. The hormone insulin and glucagon are produced in this organ and serve as an endocrine gland .The function of these hormones being created are controlling blood sugar levels.

When the blood glucose levels rise above the optimum, the pancreas detects this, and sends a metabolic signal for the pancreas to produce insulin in the beta cells. The beta cells are a part of a cluster of cells called the Islets of Langerhan. The hormone insulin is made here because the pancreas is a part of the endocrine system. (4) Insulin helps our cells convert glucose into energy, and it helps our bodies store extra glucose for use later. Insulin does this by turning the extra food into larger packages of glucose called glycogen. Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles. When the body consumes food the pancreas will produce more insulin than normal as more is needed, and less insulin when it is not needed as much. (7)

One of these symptoms is jaundice, which is characterized by yellowish skin and eyes because of an inability of the liver to remove bilirubin from the blood. Patient with cirrhosis also suffering from itching, due to deposited bile's products in the skin. This patient also suffers from accumulation of fluid in legs that is called edema. As a result of the blockage of blood flow via the liver, fluid accumulation in abdomen which is worsen by the decrease in protein production. Other symptoms include fatigue, weakness, loss of appetite, weight loss and nausea. As the disease progress, complications may develop ,such as varices that happens with cirrhosis patient when the blood flow through the liver slows, so the blood from intestine go back to the vessels of the stomach and esophagus, these vessels are not meant to carry this much of blood so they dilate (varices), with increasing

When spreading through the body there are certain stages the cancer has to go through to expand. Stage 0. There is no spread.The cancer is limited to only one cell in the pancreas. Stage I: The cancer is only limited to the pancreas cell, but has moved at least two centimeters. Not yet visible in screening tests. Stage II: The cancer has grown outside the pancreas and may have spread to the lymph nodes. Stage III: The tumor has spread drastically making it now possible for the tests to detect the tumor,increasing the possibility for it expand into the blood vessels or nerves. Stage IV: The cancer has spread to different organs of the body.("Pancreatic Cancer Treatments by Stage") The first place to attack after spreading would be the stomach, then it would expand to the liver. After the cancer reaches these points, it travels to other places in the body. ("Treating Pancreatic Cancer, Based on Extent of the Cancer").

Pain is one of the most common and feared complications of cancer. It is exacerbated by stress, anxiety, fatigue, and malaise which accompany advanced cancer. Pain is generally absent in the early stages of cancer, but it is a significant factor as the illness progresses to advanced stages. Cancer-associated pain can arise from a variety of direct and indirect mechanisms including direct pressure, obstruction, and invasion of a sensitive structure, stretching of visceral surfaces, tissue destruction, infection, and inflammation (McCance 2010). Pain is generally accepted as whatever the patient says it is, wherever the patient says it is. Treatment of pain and its associated symptoms is a primary responsibility of the healthcare team. Treatment modalities for pain include the use of opioid analgesics, patient-controlled analgesia, psychological interventions, and preventing recurrence of pain. Reinforcing the reporting of pain by the patient is important, as is a respect for the social and cultural differences with respect to pain perception.

Pancreatic Cancer is cancer of an organ in the human body called the pancreas, which is located behind the lower part of the stomach. The function of this organ is to secrete certain essential enzymes to digest food and also secrete hormones to metabolize sugars such as insulin and glucagon (Mayoclinic). People get pancreatic cancer when the cells of the pancreas develop genetic mutations; and these can form in both the exocrine and endocrine cells of the pancreas, but exocrine tumors are more common than endocrine tumors. Because this cancer spreads very quickly throughout the body and the symptoms of the disease don’t usually appear until the cancer is at an advanced stage, it is a leading cause of death

The risk factors of pancreatic cancer are habits that most Americans have developed and can not seem to break. There are five major risk factors that people should consider which include the following; Genetics, Diabetes, Smoking, Obesity and Diet (Wax, 2012). Pancreatic cancer runs in five to ten percent of people who have immediate family members who have also had it (Wax, 2012). Different genes have been indicated as risk but no “pancreatic cancer gene” has yet been discovered (Wax, 2012). “People with diabetes develop Pancreatic cancer about twice as often then people without it” (Margolis, 2002, p.497) and the two diseases have been linked (Wax, 2012). Tobacco use is known to increase the risk of pancreatic cancer (Cancer Research UK, 2013). Smoking will double the risk in developing the disease (Wax, 2012). People, who quit smoking, can reduce the risk of pancreatic, lung, mouth, and certain other cancers and diseases. It is a known fact that people with a body mass index ( BMI) higher

Cancer is a word that most people have been hearing for a long time; always being told how bad it was, and how lucky they were to not have it. One thing that these people seemed to never understand is how scary it really is to be close to someone with cancer. Patrick Swayze went through this frightening time, along with over 53,000 adults; back in 2008 (Cancer.Net, 2015). Pancreatic cancer has many causes, and among them are; smoking, damaged DNA, and their diet (John Hopkins Medicine). Think of Last sentence for this paragraph.

The main concern of Mrs R is chronic pain related to bone pain due to bone cancer with metastatic cancer in the liver as evidenced by the presence of verbal and behavioural indicators of pain such as anxiety, concerns and tension, grimacing, complaints when ambulating with a walker and a pain level of 8/10 at 8:00am.

The pancreas is an organ in the abdomen that sits before the spine over the level of the belly button. It performs two important things. First off, it makes insulin, a hormone that regulates glucose levels; secondly, it makes compounds which help separate proteins. The chemicals help digestion by breaking proteins into littler parts so they can be all the more effortlessly digested by the body and utilized for vitality. Proteins leave the pancreas through an arrangement of tubes called "ducts" that associate the pancreas to the digestion systems. The pancreas sits somewhere down in the stomach and is in close vicinity to numerous important structures, for example, the small intestine (the duodenum) and the bile pipes, and in addition critical veins and nerves.

Pancreatic carcinoma (P.C) is a malignant disease of the pancreas and one of the top ten leading causes of cancer deaths in the UK. This type of cancer is one of the few which has shown a small improvement in the survival rate. On average, the age at which patients are diagnosed with such disease is at 71 years of age and with a minimum of 40 years old in rare accounts. Whilst the risk of developing such disease is greater in developed than developing countries, various factors either lifestyle factors or hereditary can metamorphose into risk factors and become cancer causing. The pathophysiology of this type of cancer is complex and involves modification of the DNA by various ways such as point mutation, indels, gene rearrangement and more. Early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is difficult as it is an organ found quite deep in the body so any anomalies co go unnoticed during routine examinations. The incidence aswell as the mortality of

Age, gender, and race; the risk of developing pancreatic cancer increases with age. Most cases occur after age 65, while cases before age 40 are uncommon. The disease is slightly more common in men than women, and in the United States is over 1.5 times more common in African Americans, though incidence in Africa is low.

This research article adds to this medical literature because in the background Schwartz, Skinner, and Duncan discussed the etiology of pancreatic cancer and indicated one of the modifiable risk factor of pancreatic cancer which is cigarette smoking. The increased risk associated with smoking is only about twofold.

The pancreas is a digestive organ that lies below the stomach, it is mostly made up of exocrine and endocrine tissues. The exocrine parts form sacs known as Acini, which connect to ducts with empty into the first part of the intestine (The duodenum). Smaller parts of the exocrine glands are dispersed all throughout the pancreas which are known as islets of Langerhans (Anon, Unknown).