Rome, 20 November (askanews) – “This year too, the third Thursday of November is celebrated as World Pancreatic Cancer Day. Pancreatic cancer is a disease that has recently attracted more and more interest, it used to be called the “silent killer” which summarizes two characteristics of this tumor, it grows silently without causing symptoms, even late and leaves no hope for a cure. Currently pancreatic cancer, in the special classification of neoplasms, although it is the seventh tumor in terms of incidence, occurs more frequently, perhaps due to the prolongation of the average life compared to other risk factors, but the disease ranks fourth in terms of mortality. Therefore, it remains a killer although many things have changed and will change in the near future. The first aspect is related to prevention, in this field there are several important innovations: greater awareness of this disease by doctors, recognition of a series of precancerous lesions that can be treated in a benign stage, identification of several forms of familiarity with the possibility of carrying out surveillance In patients with advanced disease, chemotherapy is finding an increasingly effective treatment that is currently prolonging the life prospects of our patients (and currently almost 50%) of the disease multidisciplinary by including surgery, if possible, along with chemotherapy (the latest treatment scheme, recently published, an expression of multi-center research in Italy which certainly contributes to improving the survival of these patients) and radiotherapy to the humanization of care, an aspect that is often not considered, but which is increasingly taking up space in the evaluation of proposed therapies also with the introduction of new professional figures, especially psycho-oncology, nutritional aspects, pre-habilitation If it is true that today one can still die from pancreatic cancer, then it is also true that today one can be cured resulting in therapy targeted approach that can take into account the real complexity of the disease”.
This was said by Prof. Roberto Salvia, director of UOC pancreatic surgery at Verona Integrated University Hospital and executive director of the Verona Pancreatic Institute.
