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VIDEO: Identifying patients at increased risk for pancreatic cancer

SAN DIEGO – With a 5-year mortality rate of 98% and an anatomic placement that makes wide scale imaging unfeasible, pancreatic cancer is one of the most challenging conditions for oncologists to detect and manage, making early detection critical, according to a presenter at the ACP Internal Medicine Annual Meeting.

Primary care providers can play a critical role in making an early diagnosis by recognizing patients who are at increased risk, Syed M. Abbas Fehmi, MD, MSc, Program Director of Advanced Endoscopy at University of California San Diego, told Healio Internal Medicine.

“They should be looking out for patients with new-onset diabetes who are smokers or have chronic pancreatitis, patients with more than one relative with pancreatic cancer, patients with hereditary, recurrent acute pancreatitis or who have high risk genetic syndromes such as Peutz–Jeghers syndrome, or melanoma-type syndromes, where pancreas cancer occurs more commonly,” he said.