New symptoms can help doctors diagnose pancreatic cancer

This study further confirmed the symptoms of 21 types of pancreatic cancer, and showed that patients often have certain symptoms a year before the diagnosis, while other worrying symptoms appear three months before the diagnosis

The researchers hope that their findings can help general practitioners diagnose this disease earlier, especially when the patient has some seemingly non-specific symptoms, thereby improving survival

Among all common cancers, pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival rate, with a 5-year survival rate of about 7% in the UK

Researchers hope to better understand the early signs of pancreatic cancer, because if patients and general practitioners have more awareness of the symptoms, they can be diagnosed earlier and have a better chance of survival

This research was introduced by Dr.

Skin jaundice (jaundice) and gastric or intestinal bleeding are the two most serious symptoms, and are most related to pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNEN), the most common type of pancreatic cancer, the latter being a rarer type Pancreatic cancer

Dr.

This study is the largest of its kind and found 23 symptoms and diagnoses of PDAC (yellowing skin, bleeding in the stomach or intestines, swallowing problems, diarrhea, changes in bowel habits, vomiting, indigestion, abdominal lumps, abdominal pain, Weight loss, constipation, fat on the stool, abdominal swelling, nausea, bloating, heartburn, fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, itching, back pain, thirst and dark urine)

Although most symptoms are not specific to pancreatic cancer and may be due to other benign conditions, researchers have found that patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are more likely to have these non-specific symptoms one year before the diagnosis

Dr.

Although this study is the largest of its kind, the oldest data does not include the stage of cancer at the time the patient was diagnosed, which means that researchers cannot explore which symptoms are related to early disease and which are related to late disease

Dr.

Dr.

"Future research can help us develop tools to help general practitioners referral, especially when patients have several non-specific symptoms

Professor Julia Shipisley-Cox of Oxford University, who led the study, said: “We are grateful to the hundreds of general practitioners who use EMIS, an electronic patient record system widely used in the UK.

These results can now be used to update QCancer, a risk prediction model created from the QResearch database to help general practitioners identify high-risk patients for further detection and diagnosis of cancer

Dr.
Chris MacDonald, the head of pancreatic cancer research in the UK, who funded the study, said: “This new analysis, and the QCancer tool itself, is filling a gap in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer
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It can be used for general practice .
Doctors provide a much-needed method to identify which patients are at risk, so that they can receive diagnostic tests as early as possible and eventually get treatment before it is too late
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"This research is an important part of our Early Diagnosis Research Alliance, which brings together leading researchers in the UK to make early diagnosis of the deadliest common cancer a reality
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" Their efforts mean a new diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
The method is about to come out
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However, if we want to ensure that anyone who may suffer from this devastating disease has the best chance of survival, we also need to optimize key risk assessment tools, such as QCancer, and be mastered by general practitioners
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"

Journal Reference :

1. Weiqi Liao, Ashley K Clift, Martina Patone, Carol Coupland, Arturo González-Izquierdo, Stephen P Pereira, Julia Hippisley-Cox.
   Identifying symptoms associated with diagnosis of pancreatic exocrine and neuroendocrine neoplasms: a nested case-control study of the UK primary care population .
   British Journal of General Practice , 2021; 71 (712): e836 DOI: 10.
   3399/BJGP.
   2021.
   0153