Pancreatic cancer
How will my treatment be decided? Your treatment will largely depend on the stage of your cancer.
Staging Staging of the cancer is used to describe its size and position and whether it has spread from the pancreas itself. To gather this information, you may have a CT scan, an endoscopic ultrasound scan and/or MRI (Ducreux et al., 2015) . • CT scan: This can show where the tumour is located, and if the cancer has spread into the lymph nodes or nearby organs, such as the lungs or liver. • Endoscopic ultrasound scan: This is a type of ultrasound scan in which the ultrasound scanner is attached to the end of an endoscope, which is passed into the stomach through the mouth. This means that images can be taken from inside the body. Patients are usually given a sedative before the procedure to ensure they are comfortable and relaxed. Samples of tissue (biopsies) can also be taken during an endoscopic ultrasound scan by passing a needle down the endoscope. This can be useful to test lymph nodes for the presence of cancer cells. • MRI: This may be used for staging pancreatic cancer in some patients – for example, it can help to identify abnormal areas of liver that CT scans might miss.
After diagnosis, additional imaging scans can show how far advanced the pancreatic cancer is
Tests to measure the levels of certain biomarkers can also guide treatment decisions. Some pancreatic cancers produce a protein called cancer antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9), and the levels of this protein in the blood can give doctors helpful information about the cancer and how best to treat it (Ducreux et al., 2015). However, other medical conditions can also produce CA 19-9 and some pancreatic tumours do not produce CA 19-9. Therefore, CA 19-9 measurements are not used on their own to make therapy decisions, but may be used alongside other test results to help determine the best possible treatment.
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