Survival of Pancreatic Cancer

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is a highly aggressive cancer and has ranked the 12 th most common cancer in the world. Pancreatic Cancer is increasing in the people of Asia Pacific including Indonesia. 1,2 Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancer. 1,2 The survival rate of pancreatic cancer is exceedingly low and short. The relative one year survival rate is only 24%, and the overall 5-year survival is about 6% (ranges from 2% to 9%). 3,4 The case fatality rate for pancreatic cancer is approximately 0.97 that has declined slightly (from 0.99 to 0.97) last 12 years. 3 Risk factors of pancreatic cancer are modifiable anc non-modifiavle risk factors. Modifiable risk factors include smoking, obesity, alcohol and dietary factors. Risk factors that are not modifiable include gender, age, family history of pancreatic cancer, genetic factors, diabetes mellitus, chronic pancreatitis and chronic infections. 5,6,7 The most frequent type of pancreatic cancer is adenocarcinoma and variants (acount for 90%). 60-70% of pancreatic adenocarcinomas arise in the head of the pancreas. 7 Renaldi et al from their retrospective study found that 16% of their pancreatic cancer died within 2 months of follow up. This data showed that pancreatic cancer is a very dangerous and deadliest cancer, although this study recruited only small number of patients. This data also showed that the pancreatic cancer patients who came and admitted to the hospital were already in the advance and late stage. So this will remind us the need for early cancer screening and diagnosis to get a better survival of patients in Indonesia. 8