Medical and Health Congress

WHAT IS IT?

In the United States are diagnosed each year 29,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer each year, a disease that ranks fifth in cancer mortality worldwide. This is one of the types of tumors difficult to diagnose because symptoms often appear when the disease is already too late a stage.

In addition, the location of this gland prevents smaller tumors are detected during routine screening.

The pancreas is a gland in the abdomen between the stomach and the spine, and close to other organs like the intestine or liver.

With its distinctive pear-shaped, the pancreas is responsible for making insulin and other hormones, which reach the bloodstream and circulate throughout the body with the objective of using or accumulate for later energy from food. In addition, this gland also secretes pancreatic juices, which contain enzymes necessary to digest food.

Pancreatic tumors can be divided into two groups according to their nature, benign or malignant. The former are not cancerous, and surgeons can remove them without any problems. In fact, most of the time it reappeared again after the operation, and the cells of these tumors rarely spread beyond its initial location.

In the case of malignant tumors, the gravity is greater, and the risk to the patient’s life increases. Malignant cells can invade and damage surrounding tissue, leading to ‘sneak’ into the bloodstream and even the lymphatic system. This, in charge of defending the body, is the diseased cells as a means of transport used to travel from the tumor to other parts of the body.

This expansion is what is known as metastasis. When diseased cells reach the lymph nodes, which produce white blood cells (cells or defensive) is easier than the disease reaches other nodes and tissues, such as the liver or the lungs (known as metastases).

n other cases, the disease spreads to the peritoneum, the tissue lining the abdomen, in these cases is considered that the extension is local.

One type of rare pancreatic cancer that begins in cells that produce insulin and other hormones, which takes its name, cancer of the pancreatic islet cells. In these cases, the body produces too much insulin.

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