It’s hard to walk down the street these days without being approached by a charity worker who is looking for people to donate to their cause. Often you find these campaigners are looking for donations for a cancer related charity, along with advertisements on the radio, television, in the newspapers and pretty much everywhere you look. But we are usually only confronted with the most common types of cancer or well known cancers, such as the consistent campaigns from Breast Cancer Research charities or generic cancer charities such as the Cancer Council.
What is pancreatic cancer?
The pancreas is an important part of the digestive system, an organ that not many people are even aware exists and has a function in the body. It produces fluid that helps to digest food (pancreatic juice) as well as creating insulin, the hormone required to enable the body to use sugars and store fat.
Pancreatic cancer is a cancerous tumour that develops on the pancreas, and as with other cancers has different stages to its severity and how far it spreads, on the pancreas itself as well as the surrounding area and the rest of the body.
Pancreatic Cancer Treatment
As with any cancer treatment, this will completely depend on the individual case and the best treatment option available to them given the stage of the cancer. Chemotherapy is often given to pancreatic cancer sufferers in order to shrink the size of the tumour as well as kill any cancer cells found in the rest of the body. The idea is to shrink the tumour as much as possible to make the surgery less invasive.
Often chemotherapy or radiotherapy or both is then used again following the surgery to ensure that the patient has the best possible chance of ridding themselves of the cancer. In some cases only part of the pancreas may be removed, in others the full pancreas (pancreatectomy), again this is down to the individual case.
Pancreatic Cancer Survival Rates
Although pancreatic cancer isn’t very common and is usually only found in older people, less than 7% of patients live longer than 5 years after initial diagnosis. The low number of cases and high amount of inoperable tumours mean many hospitals have little or no experience in performing pancreatectomies. It is because of this lack of cases and opportunity to operate that your chances of surviving pancreatic cancer in Australia depends where you live.
In regions with lower surgery rates, patients are less likely to be offered surgery. This means that if you are diagnosed within one of these regions your chance of survival beyond 5 years is halved. In low surgery rate regions, patients living past 5 years was as low as 3.4% compared to 7.2% in regions where the operation was performed more frequently. In NSW pancreatic cancer patients receiving surgery was between 8-21% (2010 – 2013, Cancer Institute of NSW research findings).
Recommended Hospitals
Hospitals that treat pancreatic cancer more frequently have higher survival rates, i.e. people living beyond 5 years. The Cancer Institute of NSW has created a list of the hospitals in the state according to the frequency of the annual cases of pancreatic cancer each year. Hospitals that are recommended by the Institute are required to perform a minimum of 6 pancreatectomies per year.
At St George Private Hospital we perform 11-15 cases annually, meaning we are one of the hospitals recommended for treatment of pancreatic cancer. At Upper GI surgery our lead surgeon Associate Professor Michael Talbot is part of a multi-disciplinary team for treatment of pancreatic cancer.
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