Monday, 20 June 2016

Pancreatic Cancer: Types and Treatment

The pancreas is an organ, which is found behind your stomach and its normal features is to make hormone, which control glucose levels along with producing digestive juices, which help your body to break down food. As per reports, more than 40,000 US citizens are the victim of this form of cancer and are among the fourth most fatal reasons of death in US alone. This kind of cancer arises when you find the cells found in pancreas over glandular organ that multiplies if it remains untreated. The most common types of cancer constitutes to around 85 percent of cases, while the other forms of this kind of cancer are collectively seen making digesting enzymes. Time to check the types and treatment options available for pancreatic cancer as under:



Types of Pancreatic Cancer        

When it comes to the types of pancreatic cancer, there are several types, however, two are among the most common or major one, which is as under:

Exocrine tumors:  These are among the most common forms of cancer, which originates in the pancreatic ducts. These ducts are known for carrying the pancreatic juices over the intestine, while this type of pancreatic cancer is also known as pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
              
Endocrine tumors:  The other most common kinds of cancer comprises of a group of tumors, which originates from the cells that are known for making hormones like insulin. All these types of tumors are known as pancreatic endocrine tumors.

Surgical removal of pancreatic cancer

The surgery dealing with removal of the pancreatic cancer is known as potentially curative surgery. This is among the complex surgeries as can cause a couple of complications delaying to recover. Hence before opting for the surgery it is important to check the pros and cons of the same. This procedure has different types and Whipple procedure is among the common ones considered for removal of pancreatic cancer. During the surgery, the surgeon is seen removing the head of the pancreas and at times even the body of this organ as well along with the some nearby structures like bile duct, small intestine, lymph nodes, etc. The small intestine is then attached again so as to facilitate the passage of food sending the same to the digestive tract. More often you can find this surgery being carried out with laparoscopic approach, which starts with making one incision over the middle of patient’s belly.

Surgical relief from symptoms

As said above, this surgery is among the complex ones, hence are likely to be seen certain complications. These can include certain infections, bleeding, and trouble while emptying the stomach after eating, trouble in digesting some foods, changes experienced in bowel habits and weight loss. In order to get rid of these complications one may need another surgery to ease these symptoms.

Stenting for relief from symptoms

Stenting is carried out generally to relieve the patients from these symptoms. It is generally carried out with the procedure called endoscopy, wherein the surgery inserts a flexible kind of tube known as endoscope via your mouth and then he or she passes it to stomach. It has a camera and light, which helps the doctor to check the problem, which he or she can confirm with an x-ray if required. Once the surgeon finds out the blockage, he or she can stretch the duct by putting the stent in place.

Chemotherapy 

This procedure employs certain anti-cancer drugs, which is injected via a vein or though the mouth. These drugs then enters in the patient’s bloodstream, which in turn reaches out to all the areas of our body thus making the treatment of cancer simple and stops the spread the cancer.

Radiotherapy

This procedure uses high energy rays in order to kill the cancerous cells. The surgeons however, avoid using this procedure since it can damage the healthy cells and can have certain severe kind of side effects. Thus it is only used when other options fail as this procedure helps in killing the cancerous cells at the pancreas.

Pancreatic Cancer treatment     

Pancreatic Cancer treatment would depend upon the intensity of this problem and stages of the cancer found in the body. A majority of the treatment options generally ends up with surgeries, which deal in with removing the cancerous cells using different surgeries.


No comments:

Post a Comment