State-of-the-Art and Upcoming Innovations in Pancreatic Cancer Care: A Step Forward to Precision Medicine

Pancreatic cancer remains a social and medical burden despite the tremendous advances that medicine has made in the last two decades. The incidence of pancreatic cancer is increasing, and it continues to be associated with high mortality and morbidity rates. The difficulty of early diagnosis (the la...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cancers 2023-06, Vol.15 (13), p.3423
Main Authors: Schepis, Tommaso, De Lucia, Sara Sofia, Pellegrino, Antonio, Del Gaudio, Angelo, Maresca, Rossella, Coppola, Gaetano, Chiappetta, Michele Francesco, Gasbarrini, Antonio, Franceschi, Francesco, Candelli, Marcello, Nista, Enrico Celestino
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomarkers
Diagnosis
Disease resistance
Literature reviews
Medical innovations
Metastases
Metastasis
Morbidity
Mortality
Pancreatic cancer
Patients
Precision medicine
Prognosis
Review
Robotic surgery
Tumors
Type 2 diabetes
Veins & arteries
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Summary:Pancreatic cancer remains a social and medical burden despite the tremendous advances that medicine has made in the last two decades. The incidence of pancreatic cancer is increasing, and it continues to be associated with high mortality and morbidity rates. The difficulty of early diagnosis (the lack of specific symptoms and biomarkers at early stages), the aggressiveness of the disease, and its resistance to systemic therapies are the main factors for the poor prognosis of pancreatic cancer. The only curative treatment for pancreatic cancer is surgery, but the vast majority of patients with pancreatic cancer have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis. Pancreatic surgery is among the most challenging surgical procedures, but recent improvements in surgical techniques, careful patient selection, and the availability of minimally invasive techniques (e.g., robotic surgery) have dramatically reduced the morbidity and mortality associated with pancreatic surgery. Patients who are not candidates for surgery may benefit from locoregional and systemic therapy. In some cases (e.g., patients for whom marginal resection is feasible), systemic therapy may be considered a bridge to surgery to allow downstaging of the cancer; in other cases (e.g., metastatic disease), systemic therapy is considered the standard approach with the goal of prolonging patient survival. The complexity of patients with pancreatic cancer requires a personalized and multidisciplinary approach to choose the best treatment for each clinical situation. The aim of this article is to provide a literature review of the available treatments for the different stages of pancreatic cancer.
ISSN:2072-6694
2072-6694
DOI:10.3390/cancers15133423