Pancreatic Tumor of the Body

My cousin of 55 years of age has just been diagnosed with a 2.5 c.m. tumor in the body of the pancreas. He is starting chemotherapy on Thursday. He is a lot of pain. What can we expect in the coming months? A blood vessel is wrapped around the tumor. What is the range of life expectancy?
His CA 19-9 is 11,000 They hope to shrink the tumor and the Whipple surgery is not in the scenario.If the tumor is shrunk what type of surgery is done? Katie

[HeinrikMD]

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear about your cousin.

Sadly, this is a cancer that sorely needs better treatment options. If your cousin is not a surgical candidate - the chemotherapy can improve the chances of survival to about 20% at 1 year.

The main purpose of this treatment is to improve symptoms - in this case: the pain. Operations would generally involve a stomach bypass into intestine, ablation of a nerve (to relieve pain), not really the removal of the tumor.

An attempt to render the patient cancer free using surgery after chemotherapy is not standard of care. This is because the approach has not shown to been successful in many cases. If it is possible to have your cousin enrolled in a clinical trial - this may be the way to go if he would like an attempt at cure/ longer survival.