About 75% to 80% of pancreatic cancer cases are diagnosed when the disease is already advanced and surgery is not feasible.
This Monday morning, Boris González Reyes, son of the deceased singer, confirmed to the media that his death had been caused by late-detected pancreatic cancer. The silent disease worsened the delicate state of health of Zalo Reyes as a result of diabetes, for which he was hospitalized.
“Several serious complications passed and then great recoveries. So he had two induced comas where he came out very lucid. And then he had big casualties, which were no longer related to diabetes, ”said Boris.
“I had pancreatic cancer. And now I know that it is the most serious. The heaviest. One did not know. So it was the cancer to the pancreas that took him away,” he added.
What is pancreatic cancer and who can get it?
According to Dr. Javier Chapochnick, chief of surgery and organ transplant surgeon, liver and pancreas tumors at the Santa María Clinic; this type of cancer affects between 5 and 7 people per 100 thousand inhabitants. “It’s more prevalent among patients 50 and older,” she explains.
As Boris González Reyes reported, they did not find out regarding the cancer until 2 days before their father’s death. “The big problem with pancreatic cancer is that rarely produces symptoms until disease is advanced“, says the doctor.
Chapochnick points out that most cases have this outcome. “Around 75% or 80% of cases are diagnosed when the disease is already advanced and surgery is not feasible.. That is why he is given a poor prognosis and has a poor survival rate.”
How to prevent and treat?
The expert assures that The best way to prevent and/or treat pancreatic cancer in time is “having routine health check-ups with blood tests and images”.
Likewise, “in the presence of any lesion in the pancreas, call it a cystic tumor or a solid tumor, carry out an exhaustive study by a multidisciplinary expert group on the subject. With images, with endoscopy and eventually with a biopsy”, he recommends.
In the case of a pancreatic lesion with significant risk of malignancy, says Chapochnick, surgery to consider. “In the treatment of pancreatic cancer, most patients can be operated on and will need – apart from surgery – chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy.”
Although there are cases in which patients recover with these treatments, the doctor points out that “pancreatic cancer is largely determined because most patients are diagnosed in advanced stages of the disease.”
