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Radiation Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer

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Pancreatic Cancer

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Abstract

Adenocarcinoma of the pancreas was diagnosed in about 28,000 persons in 1997 in the United States, and the prognosis for most remains poor. A minority of patients present with localized disease amenable to curative surgery and have a median survival of 18–24 mo. Better prognosis is found in those with resected periampullary cancers, or in those with pancreatic adenocarcinoma with negative lymph nodes, and in patients with islet cell cancers (1). Survival appears to be helped slightly by adjuvant postoperative irradiation and chemotherapy (chemoradiation) (2,3). For the majority of patients with locally advanced, unresected disease, however, chemoradiation results in a median survival of only 3–10 mo, and nearly all die within 24 mo of diagnosis. Recent advances in combinations of primary irradiation with newer chemotherapy, radiotherapy treatment planning, and new external irradiation treatment techniques offer some hope to control this cancer better.

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Authors
  1. Tyvin A. Rich
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Howard A. Reber MD

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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Rich, T.A. (1998). Radiation Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer. In: Reber, H.A. (eds) Pancreatic Cancer. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1810-4_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1810-4_16

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7294-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-1810-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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