Posts Tagged ‘types of cancer’
Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer (Part 1)
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.
Diagnosis of Pancreatic Cancer
Faced with symptoms as described above, the doctor will perform a series of tests to determine what it is. Some of the diagnostic tests used are:
* Physical examination. One of the most common ways to diagnose it is to analyze the skin and eyes of the patient for any signs of jaundice.
This condition occurs when the tumor starts to grow and obstruct the bile duct, causing the appearance of the characteristic yellow color of these patients.
This assessment can help find lumps in the abdomen, although the majority of pancreatic tumors do not grow enough to be felt. The exploration also allows you to find enlarged lymph-size in the case there is metastasis.
* Analysis. Blood tests, urine and feces can check levels of bilirubin, a substance that normally passes from the liver to the intestine through the bile duct.
Symptoms of Pancreatic Cancer
Often we talk about this type of cancer as a ‘silent disease’ because, in its earliest stages, shows no sign of alarm that can be identified.
This circumstance is what prevents diagnosed in time, because the patient usually go to the doctor too late, when the cancer is already well advanced, and treatment are virtually harmless.
As the tumor grows, just by pressing one of the nearby organs, providing the first clues to suspect its existence. Some of these warning signs that may identify are:
* Abdominal pain that worsens when the patient eats a meal. An estimated three quarters of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer suffer from pain in the area as a result of the tumor puts pressure on nearby nerves and organs.
Causes of Pancreatic Cancer
For the moment, the exact cause of such tumors, and the specialists they fail to explain their origin.
It is true that research has shown that there are some people with a higher risk profile than the rest of the population, which increases your chances of developing the disease. Some of these risk factors are:
* Age
The ‘risk’ increases with age. Most cases occur in people over 60.
* The snuff.
Smokers are two to three times more likely to have a tumor in the pancreas.
* Diabetes.
These patients have a slightly higher percentage than the rest of the population due to the alterations that occur in pancreatic cells.
* A man
The number of cases is higher among males.
family history. If the mother, father or siblings have suffered from the disease, the risk triples.
Pancreatic Cancer Introduction
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.