What are the treatments for Pancreatic Cancer?
Treatments for pancreatic cancer depend on the stage of the cancer, the age of the patient, the overall health conditions and patient's preference. The major goal of tumour treatment is to eliminate the tumour. But when this turns out to be impossible, the focus will be to slow down the growth of the tumour wherever possible or to avoid causing further damages. Therefore, under certain circumstances, palliative treatment may be most suitable to individual patient.
Surgery
At present, removing the tumour completely through surgery is the only mean of eliminating pancreatic cancer thoroughly, but this is not applicable to all the patients, especially when the cancer cells have spread beyond the pancreas to other organs and affected the lymph nodes and major blood vessels extensively.
Whipple's Operation is the most commonly used surgery technique which includes the removal of the pancreas, duodenum, gall bladder and even part of the stomach, etc. The death rate caused by surgery is lower than 5%.
Around 25% of the patients have pancreatic cancer located in the body and tail of the pancreas and discovered only at advanced stage. They may need to undergo distal pancreatectomy or total pancreatectomy.
Chemotherapy
This is to kill cancer cells by using drugs, and this is usually done through intravenous injection or oral admission. Although cancer cells cannot be completely destroyed simply using chemotherapy, the signs and symptoms of the disease can be relieved and the patient's quality of life be improved. Meanwhile, chemotherapy may also be used as adjuvant treatment after the surgical removal of pancreas tumour.
Palliative Treatment
If the cancer has spread extensively, the primary objective is to mitigate the symptoms and maintain the patient's quality of life.
Palliative shunt: If the tumour blocks the bile duct, a stainless steel or plastic stent is inserted in the bile duct, so as to maintain free flowing in the duct. If the intestine is blocked, by-pass surgery may be deemed necessary.
Pain treatment: This may be the case in the advanced stage when the tumour presses against surrounding nerves, which results in severe pain. Morphine is particularly useful in this stage. When the drug fails to function efficiently, the patient may be consulted on other choices, such as using drugs to stop the pain signals from being transmitted or injecting alcohol into the nerves to destroy the pain reception nerves.