What is Pancreatic cancer?
-The pancreas is an organ found deep in the body, behind the stomach.
-It is about 6 inches long and less than 2 inches wide
What does the pancreas do?
The pancreas has two main jobs in our body:
-To produce juices that help digest food.
-To produce hormones, such as insulin and glucagon, that helps control blood sugar levels.
-The pancreas contains 2 different types of glands: exocrine and endocrine.
-The digestive juices are produced by exocrine pancreas cells and the hormones are produced by endocrine pancreas cells.
-Both the exocrine and endocrine cells of the pancreas can form tumors.
-Exocrine tumors are by far the most common type of pancreas cancer. When someone says that they have pancreatic cancer, they usually mean an exocrine pancreatic cancer.
-Pancreatic cancer happens when normal cells in the pancreas change into abnormal cells and grow out of control.
-Worldwide, pancreatic cancer ranks 13th in incidence but 8th as a cause of cancer death.
-The incidence in India is less than 2 cases per 1,00,000 persons per year.
-Exocrine tumors
-Most common type of pancreas cancer
-An adenocarcinoma is a cancer that starts in gland cells. About 95% of cancers of the exocrine pancreas are adenocarcinomas.
-These cancers usually begin in the ducts of the pancreas, but they sometimes develop from the cells that make the pancreatic enzymes
Types of pancreatic cancer u000b
-Tumors of the endocrine pancreas are uncommon.
-As a group, they are known as pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), or sometimes as islet cell tumors.
There are several subtypes of islet cell tumors. Each is named according to the type of hormone-making cell it starts in:
-Insulinomas come from cells that make insulin.
-Glucagonomas come from cells that make glucagon.
-Gastrinomas come from cells that make gastrin.
-Somatostatinomas come from cells that make somatostatin.
-VIPomas come from cells that make vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP).
-PPomas come from cells that make pancreatic polypeptide.
- It is very important to distinguish between exocrine and endocrine cancers of the pancreas.
-They have distinct risk factors and causes, have different signs and symptoms, are diagnosed using different tests, are treated in different ways, and have different prognoses (Outlook).
Staging is a careful attempt to find out the following:
-The size of the tumor in the pancreas
-Whether the tumor has invaded nearby tissues
-Whether the cancer has spread, and if so, to what parts of the body
These are the stages of cancer of the pancreas:
-Stage I: The tumor is found only in the pancreas.
-Stage II: The tumor has invaded nearby tissue but not nearby blood vessels. The cancer may have spread to the lymph nodes.
-Stage III: The tumor has invaded nearby blood vessels.
-Stage IV: The cancer has spread to a distant organ, such as the liver or lungs.
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