Recently a friend of mine was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer so I wanted to enlighten myself with what she was facing so I could best support her through this tough time. I learned that there are many treatments for pancreatic cancer patients these days. Treatments like chemotherapy, chemotherapy with targeted therapy, chemotherapy and chemoradiation and internal radiation. They can also do surgeries such as the Whipple procedure, a total pancreatectomy, and distal pancreatectomy. There’s also palliative surgery or stent placements and clinical trials with new medications and procedures. Palliative therapy can be started at any stage of cancer. Palliative Therapy treatments may improve quality of life or relieve symptoms in patients with pancreatic cancer. Palliative radiation therapy helps relieve pain by shrinking the tumor, and injections of medicine help relieve pain by blocking nerves in the abdomen.
Next there’s targeted therapies. Targeted therapies help pancreatic cancer patients because they help the immune system destroy cancer cells, stop cancer cells from growing, stop signals that help form blood vessels, deliver cell-killing substances to cancer cells, cause cancer cell death, and starve cancer of the hormones it needs to grow. New types of treatment are being tested in clinical trials even though treatment for pancreatic cancer may cause side effects. If cancer is blocking the bile duct and bile is building up in the gallbladder, a biliary bypass may be done. The thing to remember is that all treatments have the same goal, to relieve symptoms and improve quality of life.