Question about pancreatic cancer? Attn: Health care providers?

Question

Do you think they should make testing for pancreatic cancer a preventive measure, like the PSA is for prostate cancer. The survival rate of pancreatic cancer is very low and if say at age 45 the insurance covers a sonar or ct of the pancreas to catch it early so that many lives can be saved.

Answer 1

While pancreas cancer (PC) is not common compared to lung, breast, colon, and prostate, it is disproportionately lethal as nearly all with it will die. It is true that even when caught early this disease is extremely difficult to eradicate (not impossible, difficult).

Screening tests have to have several characteristics: cost-effective, safe, reliable, predictive. No current testing is good enough for PC. Most xray results would be false positives (and then require more work-up for people who are really well but no one believes it because the xray results look bad). Expense is a big issue, since again most people will be negative and you will be screening millions to pick up ~30-35,000 cases/year. Unfortunately, societal greater good trumps individual preferences here.

We do desperately need better preventive and screening measures for PC, but screening CT and US are not the answer. Maybe a blood test will be developed...

God bless, best wishes

Answer 2

Although the survival rate for pancreatic cancer is low the overall incidence of the disease is also low.  Screening for pancreatic cancer is not really a practical matter, no specific screening test similar to the PSA currently exists and the cost of screening 50 to 60 million people a year by NMR will be prohibitive.  Assuming that there were a screening test available it would have to be able to pick-up the disease at a very early stage as pancreatic cancers spread extremely rapidly.  Screening tests may provide some help in lowering the mortality rate for pancreatic cancer but how much good they would do remains to be seen.  

Answer 3

Well I think the reasons it's not the insurance companies main goal to cover more preventable methods is because the main preventable methods is healthy diet and don't smoke and then it increases even more around the age of 60.  Whereas only about 5% of the people who get this is due to genetics.  It is not my opinion that this is the reason it should not be at the Attention of health care providers but I'm just stating this is probably their reasons.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, even when Pancreatic cancer is caught early, the survival rate is still extremely low. I worked for a GI practice a few years back. One of the doctors had some pain one day, and he diagnosed himself with Pancreatic cancer even before he had all the tests. He caught it extremely early, and still lived less than a year.

Sadly, they just don't know enough about it and how it progresses to develop a reliable screening system.

Answer 5

I would like to suggest you get as much information as you could before taking action,here is a good place for that.http://health-insurance.onlinebestoffer....

Answer 6

Good question.  You have some good thoughtful answers above.

They are correct that early detection for cancers such as pancreatic carcinoma (and lung cancers) have not been nearly as useful in preventing deaths as screening for breast cancer, colon cancer, or prostate cancer.  Pancreatic cancer is still quite often advanced when it can be seen on scans.  Remember that a billion cancer cells is only roughly the size of a marble.  If you can see a cancer in the pancreas - an image on a scan - the cancer cells have often already spread elsewhere.

It would be nice to be able to test everyone for everything.

It would be wonderful if people would all stop smoking cigarettes.

Both U.S. presidential candidates are calling for reduced health care costs.  The unfortunate fact is that there is only money enough to do so much.  Before we spend money to do scanning for pancreatic cancers at younger ages, we should make sure all women are getting mammograms, all men are having PSA levels checked, and all people are getting screening colonoscopic examinations.

Of course we also need to be sure that all people have basic health care to handle preventable deaths from diseases much more common than pancreatic cancer.