Is Pancreatic Cancer Curable?
Increasing pancreatic cancer survival is the goal of medical researchers worldwide. Pancreatic cancer, particularly the exocrine kind, is a life-threatening cancer, with a relative five-year survival rate of 13 percent.
This means that people with pancreatic cancer are 13 percent as likely as those without a pancreatic cancer diagnosis to still be alive five years after diagnosis. However, this doesn’t account for the stage at which a doctor diagnoses pancreatic cancer or how well a person responds to treatment.
When this cancer is diagnosed at an early stage, when malignant cells have not yet spread and the tumor can be removed surgically, the five-year survival rate is 44 percent.
Roughly 15 percent of people get a diagnosis at this stage.
If the cancer has spread to surrounding tissues or organs, the five-year survival rate is 17 percent.
Doctors diagnose around 28 in 100 people with pancreatic cancer at this stage.
A little more than half (51 percent) of all patients receive their diagnosis when the cancer has already metastasized to a distant part of the body.
At this stage, the survival rate drops to 3 percent.
These numbers are only averages, and some people live a lot longer than these statistics suggest. Age, overall health, and an individual’s response to treatment can all affect pancreatic cancer life expectancy.