The pancreatic cancer problem.

Pancreatic cancer has become a major diagnostic and therapeutic problem. The increasing incidence over the past decade seems to be real, but by the time the patient has symptoms and the physician begins to think about the possibility of pancreatic cancer, the disease has spread beyond hope of cure by resection, radiation, or chemotherapy. At present, no therapeutic program does more than extend life, and then only for short periods of time. It, therefore, makes more sense to use 2-year survival rates rather than 5-year survival rates to assess the impact of new treatments since no therapies to date reproducibly produce 5-year survivors. We hope that the newer radiologic imaging techniques will lead to the earlier recognition of pancreatic cancer and an improved outlook.