Pancreatic cancer is on the rise: Experts expect the number of patients to double

Already last year, the Czech Republic started a program for the early detection of this disease, based on the examination of people with a high risk of developing cancer. In the future, up to 30 specialized centers across the country could be included in the project, and doctors hope to check several hundred patients a year in the future.

Pancreatic cancer is the third most common cause of death among cancer diseases, doctors diagnose it in 2,400 people in the Czech Republic every year, and almost 2,200 patients die from it. In addition, according to experts, the number of cases is constantly growing and by 2050 they expect to double.

Weight loss and loss of appetite

Pancreatic cancer does not cause any problems at first, and the vast majority of doctors detect it only at an advanced stage. This is already manifested by weight loss, loss of appetite, abdominal and back pain or yellowing of the skin. “At this stage, the patient’s treatment prognosis is no longer favorable, the average survival is around 8 months. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial to detect pancreatic tumors at an early stage, when surgical removal and further oncological treatment are still possible, which increases the chance of five-year survival to 12%.” says prof. MD Ondřej Urban, Ph.D., Head II. internal clinics – gastroenterology and geriatrics University Hospital Olomouc.

That is also why he and his colleagues advocated in the past years for the launch of a program to search for early forms of pancreatic cancer, which actually started at the end of last year. “We focus on patients in whom the disease can be predicted and the risk of occurrence is high in them. There are about 10% of them, and they are mainly people with a family history of cancer or carriers of a risky genetic mutation. At the moment, we already have more than 100 patients selected for the program. We hope to examine on the order of hundreds of patients a year,” explains prof. Urban.

READ Also:  Dangers of hypertension and ways of protection

More than 30 centers

According to him, it is also planned to launch a register of these patients in the spring, which will make it possible to better evaluate the data and monitor the success of the program. When selecting high-risk cases, they rely on close cooperation with oncologists, geneticists and surgeons, but also with general practitioners, who send patients for examination to so-called centers of highly specialized care for digestive endoscopy. There are now nineteen of them in the Czech Republic, but their number should increase to over thirty in the future.

“The centers are located in leading Czech gastroenterology workplaces, which are able to provide comprehensive care for patients with this serious disease without unnecessary time loss,” says doc. MD Ilja Tachecí, Ph.D., chairman of the Czech Gastroenterology Society and head of II. internal gastroenterology clinics of the Faculty of Medicine of the UK and the National University of Hradec Králové.

How does the examination take place?

“After inclusion in the program, in addition to blood tests, at-risk persons also undergo a magnetic resonance examination and a special ultrasound examination using an endoscope. The criteria for patient selection, specific examinations and their timing are precisely specified in the new recommended procedure of the Czech Gastroenterology Society, developed in cooperation with oncologists and surgeons. The time of passive bystander is over, the problem needs to be solved intensively, even though we all realize how difficult it is.” delivered by doc. Tachecí.

According to him, this is also underlined by the number of congresses dedicated to the topic and the intensive cooperation of experts in the mentioned fields. The entire early detection program then takes place within the framework of a scientific study, which should verify whether this method will significantly increase the number of treatable tumors at an early stage. Currently, the only truly effective treatment for pancreatic cancer is surgical removal of the tumor.

“However, resectable tumors are only diagnosed in 10-15% of cases. We primarily operate on these patients only if they are in good overall condition, i.e. without significant weight loss, and if the level of tumor markers does not move in high values, which warns of possible micrometastases that cannot be detected on imaging methods. Pancreatic tumors with metastases are treated with systemic chemotherapy. Unfortunately, such patients are the vast majority, around 50-60%.

In the remaining approximately 25% of cases, the tumors are locally advanced but without metastases. They are often in significant contact with or grow into the surrounding important vascular structures. Some patients can undergo pancreatic resection only at the cost of vascular replacement or only after eventual reduction of locally advanced tumors with systemic oncological treatment,” says Prof. MD Zdeněk Kala, CSc., Chairman of the Czech Surgical Society ČLS JEP.

According to him, the remaining approximately 60% of pancreatic tumors are already so advanced at the time of diagnosis that they cannot be operated on and doctors start chemotherapy. The operation, according to prof. Kaly is also increasingly performing so-called mini-invasive techniques and with the help of a surgical robot. This allows for the smallest possible intervention and facilitates the patient’s recovery.