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Individual treatment improves chances of recovery in a pancreatic cancer
Actor Patrick Swayze, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs: They all succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Every year, around 330,000 people worldwide die of this tumor disease. An individual therapy can improve the chances of recovery.
Pancreatic cancer initially without discomfort
Around 330,000 men and women worldwide die of pancreatic cancer each year. In Germany, too, more and more cases of pancreatic cancer are recorded. About 16,600 people die each year from this tumor in Germany. Since pancreatic cancer is usually asymptomatic in the beginning, it is often diagnosed late. When the classic symptoms such as jaundice, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, underweight, nausea and vomiting occur, in many cases no treatment success can be achieved. According to the diagnosis, less than five percent of those affected survive the next five years. Recently, scientists from the UK reported that in the future pancreatic cancer could be diagnosed with a urine test. The researchers, who have already achieved good results, said that a previous diagnosis could significantly improve the currently very poor chances of recovery.
In pancreatic cancer, the chances of recovery can be significantly improved by an individual therapy. (Image: Henrie / fotolia.com) Top center of the German Cancer Society
The pancreatic center of the University Hospital Düsseldorf (UKD) reports in a press release about an improvement in the treatment options. The oncological center of excellence of the German Cancer Society specializes in diagnostics and treatment of this cancer. "No patient and no patient are given up here," said Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfram Trudo Knoefel, Director of the Surgical Clinic at the UKD. "Today, cancer patients are no longer being treated in a single area of expertise, but are receiving multi-step therapy through different departments that are tailored to their condition. All available treatment options, such as surgery, immunotherapy or chemotherapy, are usefully exploited. "
After the diagnosis often follows an operation
For this purpose, various institutes of the clinic work closely together. "For the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer are ultrasound, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, but also the so-called oral endosonography important," said Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dieter Häussinger, Director of the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectiology at the UKD. "In oral endosonography, an ultrasound of the pancreas is performed via a gastroscopy." The next steps are then often surgery and chemo.
Chemotherapy before the operation
According to the experts, surgical treatment is considered to be particularly demanding if a tumor is classified as "no longer operable," for example, if it is too large to be completely removed, or if metastases have already formed. Then, a so-called neoadjuvant chemotherapy may be useful in the pre-surgery chemotherapy is administered, which has the potential to reduce the size of the tumor and so still to allow surgery. "About eight years ago, at our interdisciplinary pancreatic center, we started giving neoadjuvant chemotherapy to patients with pancreatic cancer and liver metastases. Some patients responded excellently and then underwent successful surgery, "explained Prof. Knoefel. Scientists at the University Hospital in Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) reported on such a therapy for pancreatic cancer in which irradiation and chemotherapy take place before surgery.
Recommendations for individualized treatment
As the Dusseldorf physicians explained, some patients develop recurrence and metastases despite successful surgery. Her research focuses on this phenomenon: "Our interpretation is that individual cells detach from the tumor and survive in the bone marrow, in the blood circulation or in the lymph nodes and grow into tumorous foci after a certain time," says Prof. Knoefel. Since the number of these circulating tumor cells in the blood is very low, they enrich the researchers to subsequently detect and characterize them by molecular biological methods. This is intended to identify high-risk patients at an early stage. This in turn means that they can be offered an optimized therapy. Dusseldorf is not just about pancreatic cancer. "For all types of tumor diseases, we have specialists who work closely together," said Prof. Knoefel. In addition, the University Cancer Center (UTZ) has a tumor bank (biomaterial bank), which forms a starting point for further research. The physicians are doing research on molecular diagnostic methods that allow on the basis of DNA sequencing to discover the genetic mutations possibly present in a tumor. From the results they can derive recommendations for a personalized and individualized treatment. (Ad)