One of the most recognizable names in the history of television, “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek, has just announced that he has pancreatic cancer. Trebek has spent decades as a fixture in millions of American homes. Now, he is facing a very challenging diagnosis.
When someone who is well know is diagnosed with cancer, it’s important to not generalize about their specific case. Trebek’s statement said that he has advanced, stage IV pancreatic cancer. “It is a serious cancer, but the diagnosis itself does not mean there are no options,” says Dr. Daniel Labow, Chair of Surgery at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai West and Assistant Chief of Surgical Oncology. “Newer chemotherapies and newer approaches have allowed us to treat pancreas cancer and cure patients with that. We have better options today, and certainly with the new surgical techniques and some of the new chemotherapy agents, we are making slow progress,” says Dr. Labow.
Read MoreThe greatest difficulty with pancreatic cancer is the solid tumors. “It is the solid tumor cancer that has the worst prognosis. It is right now the third leading cause of cancer death, soon to be the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States,” says Dr. Ocean. “Mortality is rising because it is caught so late and we don’t have enough effective medications against the cancer.”
“The cancer cells are surrounded by what is called a stroma, and the stroma serves as a barrier for medications to get in to the cancer to kill it,” says Dr. Ocean. Stroma is tissue that surrounds the cancer tumor. “So chemotherapies have a hard time getting in, radiation has a hard time penetrating. Think of pancreatic cancer as an oatmeal raisin cookie and the raisins are actually the cancer cells, and the cookie part is actually all the stroma around it. And imagine having to navigate through all that stroma for a treatment to be able to get into a cell to kill it. So that’s why the treatments just really aren’t good enough to penetrate the cancer. But we’re improving, we’re getting better treatments.”
There has also been a lot of progress in surgery for pancreatic cancer. “One of the things that we now understand is the anatomy of the pancreas and how we can treat it surgically. An operation that used to take eight or ten hours, and people would be in the hospital for two to three weeks, now we can do even robotically or minimally invasively,” says Dr. Labow.
“Or even if we don’t do it like that, patients leave the hospital in five to six days, and can recover and have totally normal lives, based on techniques, the understanding how we need to approach the patient,” says Dr. Labow. “So having pancreas surgery doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have any limitations on what you can eat or drink.”
It’s even possible to get back to a normal life post surgery. “It doesn’t make you diabetic automatically, since the pancreas is also involved in that, and people can lead completelive completely normal lives,” says Dr. Labow.
But surgery isn’t a replacement for chemotherapy. “Of course everyone who has pancreas cancer does go on to get chemotherapy, even if it’s relatively early, because it’s so aggressive. And therefore that can affect your recovery after surgery when getting chemotherapy, but certainly, um, patients can be cured with this as well,” he says.
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