Pancreatic cancer is currently the fourth leading cause of cancer death in Europe, with about 13,700 new cases per year in Italy.
It is a “silent” cancer because often the symptoms are not evident and clear. “It is characterized by a sneaky presentation, by an often late diagnosis and by a severe prognosis – explained Alessandro Zerbi, Head of the Pancreatic Surgery Unit at Humanitas -. Things are changing, however, thanks to a greater awareness of this disease, the diagnoses take place in a slightly more timely way than in the past and progress has been made in the therapeutic field. The availability of new and more effective chemotherapy regimens and a better integration of surgery with chemotherapy and radiotherapy are leading to improvements in prognosis. Research is also particularly vibrant on this tumor: we expect it to provide new biomarkers for earlier diagnosis and characterization in different subtypes of pancreatic cancer for increasingly personalized therapies,” concluded the professor.
The story of Catherine
Eight years after her recovery Caterina – 54 year old Milanese accountant, mother and wife – tells of her treatment path: “The symptoms were not clear, I felt very tired. It was the summer of 2010, I was on holiday and I woke up with a sense of nausea, I felt all the possible smells, I was very tired. At first I thought it was something I had eaten. I had been feeling exhausted for a long time, but I had arrived at the summer holidays so stressed and overloaded with fatigue, that I thought it was only necessary to have a lot of rest. The symptoms don’t improve and, on the contrary, new ones are added, such as white stools, very dark urine and a very intense itch in the palm of the hands and feet.
Early diagnosis and treatment at Humanitas
After the first blood and urine tests and the opinion of the family doctor Caterina arrived at Humanitas where she deepened her clinical situation with other tests, an ultrasound and a CT scan: “In a few hours the doctors had a diagnosis: suspected pancreatic cancer”. Dr. Paolo Omodei, head of Clinical Gastroenterology at Humanitas, and Prof. Alessandro Zerbi, head of the Pancreatic Surgery Unit, admitted her. “They were very clear – said the former patient -. Delicate, kind, exhaustive. They told me everything I needed to know, answered every question I had, explained what I should have done, step by step, from that moment on. To them, and then to the oncologists, I owe my life. I couldn’t have asked for or hoped for better. After all, even though the diagnosis could be very frightening… I’m still here”.
“Catherine’s story is emblematic of how wrong it is to consider a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer as the equivalent of a sentence. It’s not like that, and doctors and researchers are working so that stories like this can be heard more and more often”, concluded Prof. Zerbi.
