Increasingly, patients who choose to have an active role in their disease, to know everything concerning the disease in order to make some decisions that determine the most appropriate treatment, which carries fewer side effects and so on.
However, sometimes the shock which is faced with a disease like cancer prevents patients and their families to think clearly and ask questions that otherwise would arise.
Currently, pancreatic tumors is one of the most difficult to control even with the available treatments.
This is the reason that can lead to many doctors encourage their patients to participate in a clinical trial, an option that can be very interesting and useful for some people.
Find out if the hospital where he is being treated is carried out some research on their disease, perhaps in this case can participate and have access to experimental drugs or specific therapies under investigation.
Pancreatic cancer can only be cured if detected very early in the disease, before the diseased cells have begun to spread.
However, when you can not cure the patient completely eliminate the cancer, because it is already too widespread, there is another type of medicine, palliative, which can prolong the life of the patient in the best possible conditions, controlling the pain and problems caused by the disease.
The final choice will depend on factors as varied as the age or general condition of the patient, the stage when the tumor is so. Here are some alternatives:
* Surgery
The surgery can be done alone or combined with some sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The extent of the operation will depend on tumor size, location … Today, at the time of diagnosis, only 20% of pancreatic tumors can be removed.
The standard procedure used is called pancreaticoduodenectomy or Whipple procedure. According to the patient and tumor, the surgeon will remove the head of the pancreas and part of the small intestine, bile duct and stomach and surrounding tissues or the whole pancreas and spleen (in what is known as distal pancreatectomy).
Another more aggressive intervention total pancreatectomy, during which doctors completely removed the pancreas, but also a part of the small itestine, bile duct, gallbladder, spleen and lymph nodes closest.
Tags: Pancreatic Cancer, Pancreatic tumors, Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer, types of cancer, types off tumor
