Agnė Kavaliauskaitė¹

¹Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Academy of Medicine, Kaunas, Lithuania

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is an intractable malignancy which more often occurs in more developed countries.  PC has high mortality and morbidity rate, is fourth leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Symptoms depend on the localisation of the tumor, but there are no specific symptoms and that leads to late diagnosis. Carbohydrate 19-9 antigen (Ca 19-9) is the only marker used in clinical practice, but there are other biomarkers for earlier diagnosis at the research levels. The standard for PC diagnosis and staging is multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT). Surgical resection is the only potentially curative treatment for PC. Two main surgical methods are pacreaticoduodenectomy for tumors of the head of the pancreas and distal pancreatectomy for tumors localised in the tail or body of the pancreas. Minimally invasive surgery use is increasing, however, so far it does not have many advantages over open surgery.

Keywords: pancreatic cancer, biomarkers, cancerseek, pancreaticoduodenectomy.