Stage 1 Pancreatic Cancer Survival Rate

Pancreatic Cancer Survival Rates: What Do They Really Mean

The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2020, 57,600 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 47,050 will die from the disease. But not everyones pancreatic cancer is the same. Understanding what survival rates meanand which factors can impact themcould help you navigate your or your loved ones disease.

Some People Want To Know Whether Their Cancer Can Be Cured Or How Long They Have Left To Live This Is Called Their Prognosis Outlook Or Life Expectancy This Page Explains Prognosis If You Have Cancer That Can Be Removed With Surgery

The prognosis will be different for each person, and depends on several things, including whether the cancer has spread, how far it has spread, and the treatments you can have.

Surgery is the most effective treatment for pancreatic cancer. If it is an option for you, it may help you to live longer. After surgery, you may be offered chemotherapy to try to reduce the chances of the cancer coming back. You will have check-ups to check for any signs that the cancer has come back. If it does come back, you may be offered further treatment with chemotherapy.

You may not want to know your prognosis. Everyone is different, and it is up to you whether you find out about your prognosis. But if you do want to know, speak to your doctor. They should be able to give you an idea of what to expect. There is a lot of information about pancreatic cancer online, and not all of it is accurate. So its important to speak to your doctor about your own situation.

How Do You Know If Pancreatic Cancer Has Spread To The Liver

You might have any of the following symptoms if your cancer has spread to the liver: discomfort or pain on the right side of your tummy feeling sick. poor appetite and weight loss.

Is pancreatic cancer painful death?

If you are approaching the end of life, the cancer may cause symptoms such as pain, fatigue , sickness, weight loss and bowel problems.

What is the life expectancy of someone with pancreatic cancer?

Pancreatic cancer life expectancy as per the medical studies is very low. Once a patient gets detected with this condition, the average pancreatic life expectancy varies from 5-8 months only, although 20% of the pancreatic patients can survive up to 1 year.

How long can one live with pancreatic cancer without treatment?

There are cases where the patient, not knowing himself getting pancreatic cancer before, found it out four days before his death. It is known that most patients of metastatic pancreatic cancer with proper treatment can survive 3-5 months or even a year. Without treatment, the remaining days could be numbered down to below three months or even less. Keywords:Â pancreatic cancer without treatment.

Read Also: Why Does My Stomach Hurt Really Bad

Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer

This type of pancreatic cancer has grown into nearby tissues, organs or a major blood vessel. Although it may be possible to remove the tumor, surgeons may not be able to extract all of the cancer via surgery. Chemotherapy or radiation therapy may be used to shrink the tumor, so it may be surgically removed.

Physical Status After Treatment

Getting the right nutrition and keeping physically active as much as possible under the circumstances can really impact how a patient tolerates the side effects of treatment and the symptoms of pancreatic cancer.

Younger patients tend to do better because they have fewer other conditions that may limit recovery, but even older patients can positively impact their prognosis by focusing on nutrition and exercise.

Talk to your doctor about what to expect after treatment and what you can do to get the best possible prognosis.

Don’t Miss: Mental Problems After Liver Transplant

Where Do These Numbers Come From

The American Cancer Society relies on information from the SEER* database, maintained by the National Cancer Institute , to provide survival statistics for different types of cancer.

The SEER database tracks 5-year relative survival rates for pancreatic cancer in the United States, based on how far the cancer has spread. The SEER database, however, does not group cancers by AJCC TNM stages . Instead, it groups cancers into localized, regional, and distant stages:

• Localized: There is no sign that the cancer has spread outside of the pancreas.
• Regional: The cancer has spread from the pancreas to nearby structures or lymph nodes.
• Distant: The cancer has spread to distant parts of the body such as the lungs, liver or bones.

Pancreatic Cancer Survival Rate

The pancreatic cancer survival rate continues to improve as research leads to new and better ways to diagnose and treat the condition. However, when discussing the survival rate, its important to remember that it is nothing more than a statistic. Every patient is unique and every cancer is different. A statistic can only describe what happened retrospectively in a very large groupit does not take into account the advances in cancer care that are being made every single day, nor can it predict the outcome in any individual situation. In fact, some patients live much longer than the amount of time that would be anticipated based on the survival rate alone.

You May Like: Dog Treats For Sensitive Stomachs

Overall Survival For Pancreatic Cancer

The overall one-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 24.4%, in the UK. This means that around 24 in 100 will have survived to one year and beyond.

The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 7.3%. This means that around 8 in 100 people will have survived for five years and beyond.

10-year survival of the disease is 1%, meaning only around 1 in 100 people survive 10 years and beyond.

Pancreatic cancer has the lowest five-year survival rate of any of the 22 common cancers. However, it is encouraging that survival has more than doubled since Pancreatic Cancer Action began, 10 years ago. Though increases in survival may seem small, we are beginning to see a slow but positive trend upwards after decades without improvement.

Better Prognosis For Resectable Tumors

Patients whose tumors are found before they have metastasized or become locally advanced tend to have longer survival rates, on average, because their tumors can usually be resected .

About 15 to 20 percent of all pancreatic tumors are resectable. These include stage I and stage II tumors. Rarely, locally advanced stage III tumors, which are typically considered unresectable , are characterized as borderline and may be removed if the patient has access to an experienced, highly trained surgeon.

Tumors can still grow back in many patients. So, on average, patients whose tumors were resected live for 2.5 years after their diagnosis and have a five-year survival rate of 20 to 30 percent.

Read Also: How Serious Is Liver Cancer

Survival For Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is often diagnosed at an advanced stage. Your outlook is better if your cancer hasn’t spread and you can have surgery to remove it.

Survival depends on many factors. No one can tell you exactly how long you will live.

Below are general statistics based on large groups of people. Remember, they cant tell you what will happen in your individual case.

What You Can Do

If youve been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, there may not be much you can do to alter outcome based solely on lifestyle changes. However, eat a healthy diet and keep active if you can. It is possible that these types of changes can improve general health and performance status, which can lead to better outcomes, not to mention a better quality of life.

If youre looking to prevent pancreatic cancer , its always a good time to quit smoking . After 10 years, your pancreatic cancer risk will be the same as a non-smoker. Sadly, if youve already got a diagnosis, theres no evidence that quitting smoking actually increases survival times, though it would likely make you feel better.

Losing weight might also sound like a good idea, and it would be if youre trying to prevent pancreatic cancer, diabetes, and other health problems. But if youre already diagnosed, its not wise to embark on a weight-loss program while undergoing chemotherapy.

What you can do is make sure youre eating the right foods and you have the right medications to help you digest food. Pancreatic cancer patients often need to be prescribed digestive enzymes to help with digestion.

Before embarking on any lifestyle intervention, speak with your oncologist.

Also Check: What To Take For Leaky Gut

What Is The Survival Rate For Pancreatic Cancer That Has Spread To The Liver

More than 50% of patients with pancreatic cancer have liver metastases at the time of diagnosis and is associated with a poor prognosis. For patients with resectable disease, surgery is the treatment of choice, and it has been moderately effective, with 5-year survival rates ranging from 20% to 25%.

How long can you live with pancreatic cancer and liver cancer?

Life expectancy for pancreatic cancer is often expressed in 5-year survival rates, that is, how many people will be alive 5 years after diagnosis.How Long Do You Have to Live with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer?

Staging: Two Different Commonly Used Methods

Doctors generally rely on two different systems for staging pancreatic cancer:

• Surgical resection staging This method focuses on whether the cancer can be resected and where it has spread. Complete surgical resection of pancreatic cancer leads to the best long-term prognosis.
• TNM This system categorizes cancer into one of five stages ranging from 0 to 4. The determination of which stage best describes a tumor depends on how big the tumor is and whether it has grown into nearby blood vessels whether or not it has spread to nearby lymph nodes and whether it has metastasized to distant sites. A stage 0 tumor is the least advanced, while stage 4 pancreatic cancer is the most advanced.

Don’t Miss: What Are The Warning Signs Of Pancreatitis

How Does Survival Rate Depend On Stage At Diagnosis

Fiveyear pancreatic cancer relative survival rates are 37% for patients with localized disease , 12% for patients with regional disease , and 3% for those with distant pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is most often diagnosed at an advanced stage 53% of patients are diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, whereas only 10% of patients are diagnosed at the early stage when surgery is possible. Because the majority of patients are diagnosed at stage 4, which has the lowest survival rate, the overall survival rate for all stages is 9%lower than the average survival rate of all the stages.

Survival Rates For Early Pancreatic Cancer

Some people want to know about survival rates for pancreatic cancer. Survival rates are averages based large groups of people with pancreatic cancer. They cant tell you what will happen to you. But if you do want to know this, you can click the link below.

You may find these statistics frightening or upsetting, so think carefully before reading this information. You should also speak to your doctor about your own situation.

You can speak to our specialist nurses on our free Support Line with any questions about pancreatic cancer, and for emotional support.

You May Like: How To Reduce Fatty Liver Disease

How Is Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosed

Its difficult to detect pancreatic cancer in the early stages. This is because healthcare providers cannot feel the pancreas in a routine exam. If your provider suspects that you may have pancreatic cancer, they may order imaging tests to take pictures of the internal organs. An endoscopic ultrasound can also be done.

An endoscopic ultrasound is a thin tube with a camera at the tip that is passed through the mouth and into the stomach. The ultrasound probe at the end of the endoscope allows imaging of the pancreas through the stomach wall. If necessary, an ultrasound-guided biopsy from the pancreas can be obtained during the procedure.

A blood test can find a substance called a tumor marker. For pancreatic cancer, high levels of carbohydrate antigen 19-9 a type of protein released by pancreatic cancer cells might indicate a tumor.

Everyone who is newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer should talk to their doctor about doing genetic counseling and testing to see if there is a hereditary reason they developed pancreatic cancer. This is based on recommendations from two of the largest cancer organizations, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the American Society of Clinical Oncology .

What Is The Pancreas

The pancreas is a small, hockey stick-shaped gland located behind the stomach. The main jobs of the pancreas are to aid in food digestion and regulate blood sugar levels in the body. The pancreas is involved in maintaining blood sugar levels because it makes insulin and glucagon, two hormones that control blood sugar levels.

Also Check: Pancreatic Elastase Test Results 800 Ug/g

Factors That Influence Survival

Cancer registries base five-year survival rates on everyone with the diagnosisregardless of age, health, or cancer type. Any one patients actual risk of getting pancreatic cancer, as well as their survival after treatment, will be dictated by other factors. Some of those factors can be changed, while others cant.

• Age: Older patients fare worse than younger patients.
• Race:The pancreatic cancer rate is considerably higher for Black people than for any other race.
• Cancer types: Different cells in the pancreas give rise to tumors that react differently to treatments. These include neuroendocrine tumors, small cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, and primary pancreatic lymphoma.
• Smoking:Tobacco use is a risk factor for developing pancreatic cancer. If no one smoked, there would be 30% fewer pancreatic cancers.
• Alcohol:Heavy drinkers have a worse prognosis than those who dont drink or drink less.
• Obesity: Excess weight before the age of 50 is correlated with increased pancreatic cancer risk.
• Diabetes: People with diabetes have worse survival when diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
• Performance status:This measure of a patients ability to perform daily tasks is one of the best indicators of prognosis. The more trouble everyday tasks are, the worse off the patient is.
• Surgery:If the doctor can cut the whole tumor out, the patient has a much better outlook.

Results Of Univariate And Multivariate Analyses

In the univariate analysis, stratification factors, such as race, sex, year of diagnosis, pathological grade, AJCC stage, historic stage, tumour location, and age were used to evaluate PCSS and calculate the five-year PCSS. All of these factors, except sex, were significantly associated with PCSS .

In multivariate analysis, all significant stratification factors were included in the Cox model . Race and sex were not found to be prognostically important for assessing the survival of PC patients. Additionally, recent diagnosis of PC was found to be associated with a better survival than diagnosis in previous years. Undoubtedly, PC patients with tumours of higher grades had a higher risk of death than did those with tumours of pathological grade I/II. Likewise, advanced PC patients in stage III/IV or with distant organ involvement had a much poorer prognosis than did those outside this grouping. Compared with tumours in the head, tumours localized in the body and tail of the pancreas appeared to be associated with a favourable prognosis. Finally, the mortality risk of PC patients aged between 40 and 80 years was twice that of the patients aged below 40 years. However, patients aged > 80 years had a mortality risk three times higher than that of patients aged < 40 years. Therefore, age was an independent factor for predicting the prognosis of PC patients.

Recommended Reading: Ion Gut Health Side Effects

Patients And Data Collection

The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database of the US National Cancer Institute was utilized for this research. We used SEER*Stat software to retrieve the patients data. Patients with PDAC were identified using the topography codes and histology codes of the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology, third edition . Other variants of pancreatic malignancies were excluded. Patients with undefined tumor size or unclear tumor location , who were younger than 18years old, and did not have surgeries performed on them, were excluded in our study. We collected demographic data, including age, race, and gender. Tumor information, including tumor location, size, grade, AJCC 7th TNM stages, lymph nodes information, and operation methods were retrieved. We extracted survival information such as number of months survived, causes of deaths, and vital statuses. We transformed the AJCC 7th stage into AJCC 8th stage according to the definition of these two systems . Since our data was from SEER public database, no specific patients information was recorded so ethical consent was not necessary.

What Is The Outlook For Pancreatic Cancer

Over the past decade, the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients increased from 6% to 11%.2 There is an urgent need to improve survival even more. But this increase shows that progress is being made. Those five percentage points mean that 11 people out of 100, instead of six people out of 100, will be alive five years after their pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is working toward better treatment options for pancreatic cancer patients and ways to find the disease earlier. We are determined to improve patient outcomes today and into the future. Contact PanCAN Patient Services for resources, support and information.

Read Also: Guts Greatness Under Tremendous Stress

How Is The Survival Rate Determined

For the five-year survival rate, SEER uses data from different areas throughout the country. When SEER was first developed, there were nine places that data were gathered from, making up the SEER-9 database.

SEERs database has grown to 18 regions now, called SEER-18. But, they continue to use the SEER-9 data as the benchmark to compare survival rate trends over time.

To get the five-year survival rate, numbers must be analyzed over a range of time. This means that the patients included in the analysis received treatment and care that may be different from today. Knowledge and treatment have improved in recent years.

There are many other ways to look at survival. Besides the five-year survival rate, people also measure:

• Overall survival: the length of time from diagnosis to a patients death
• Progression-free survival: how long a person stays on a treatment without their disease getting worse
• Disease-free survival: the amount of time a person is believed to be cancer-free, also known as no evidence of disease

These other survival measurements are often used to judge success of clinical trials.