What You Need to Know About Pancreatic Cancer

Each year, the month of November is recognized as Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. This event serves to bring attention to the disease and the importance of routine cancer screening while also driving donations to fund pancreatic cancer research.

At St. Jude Labs, we want to lend our platform to this worthy cause by discussing important pancreatic cancer facts. From enlightening pancreatic cancer statistics to the pancreatic cancer symptoms to watch for, here is everything you need to know about this disease.

What is Pancreatic Cancer?

Like other types of cancers, pancreatic cancer is named based on where cancer originates – in this case, the pancreas. But what is the pancreas, and what role does this organ play in the human body?

You’ll find the pancreas located underneath the liver near the gallbladder and stomach. It’s a roughly six-inch-long, pear-shaped organ that is responsible for releasing insulin and other hormones that aid in the body’s digestive process.

When cells in the pancreas develop mutations in their DNA, they become cancerous and cause a tumor in the pancreas to form. Cancerous cells from the pancreas can also spread throughout the bloodstream to other lymph nodes and organs.

How Common is Pancreatic Cancer?

Pancreatic cancer is not an especially common type of cancer; it’s the 8th most common type of cancer in women, the 10th most common type of cancer in men, and accounts for only 3% of all cancer cases in the United States.

What’s alarming, though, is that despite the fact that pancreatic cancer is considered a rarer form of cancer, it is still the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. This is due to the fact that pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers. While the survivability of any cancer is highly dependent on the stage at which it is diagnosed, the five-year relative survival rate for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined is only 11%.

Pancreatic Cancer Symptoms

One of the reasons why pancreatic cancer is so deadly is the fact that it often goes unnoticed until the disease has progressed. Symptoms of pancreatic cancer don’t often appear until the later stages of the disease, making it difficult to diagnose when the cancer is still local and more easily curable. Nevertheless, it is still important to be aware of pancreatic cancer symptoms, which include symptoms such as:

• Abdominal pain that radiates to the back
• Loss of appetite or unintentional weight loss
• Jaundice, or yellowing of the skin/whites of the eyes
• Itchy skin
• Blood clots
• Fatigue
• Dark-colored urine
• Light-colored stools
• New diagnosis of diabetes or existing diabetes that’s becoming more difficult to control

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, be sure to meet with a physician right away.

Pancreatic Cancer Risk Factors

Researchers have not yet identified the exact cause of pancreatic cancer. However, they have identified several risk factors that can increase a person’s chances of developing the disease. These include risk factors such as:

• Smoking
• Diabetes
• Chronic inflammation of the pancreas
• Obesity
• Family history of pancreatic cancer
• Age
• Family history of genetic syndromes that can increase cancer risk

How to Reduce Your Pancreatic Cancer Risk

Some of the biggest risk factors of pancreatic cancer such as age and family history are factors that you can’t do anything to control. However, other pancreatic risk factors can be avoided and reduced with the right lifestyle changes. Maintaining a healthy weight by eating a nutritious diet and getting plenty of exercise is the first key to reducing pancreatic cancer risk. Stopping or avoiding smoking is another crucial key to lowering your risk of pancreatic cancer; people who smoke are about twice as likely to develop pancreatic cancer as those who do not, and 25% of all pancreatic cancer cases are contributed to smoking.

Smoking along with heavy alcohol consumption can also cause chronic inflammation of the pancreas, which is another risk factor for pancreatic cancer. Lastly, it is thought that heavy exposure to certain industrial chemicals used in the dry cleaning and metalworking industries may contribute to the development of pancreatic cancer, making it essential to follow all safety precautions when working with these chemicals.

This Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, be sure that you are making the choices that will reduce your pancreatic cancer risk.