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How successful is surgery for pancreatic cancer?
I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and will have surgery. How successful is surgery for pancreatic cancer?
4 Answers
Surgery for pancreatic cancer is quite safe and successful if performed by a surgeon who does them frequently, meaning at least 2 or 3 a month. It has to be localized to the pancreas without evidence of spread anywhere else and it needs to be free of the vessels that go to the liver.
If you are seeing a surgeon who sees a lot of patients with pancreatic cancer and does pancreatic surgery, then surgery can be safe and still offers your best chance of being cured of pancreatic cancer.
In expert hands, surgery for pancreatic cancer is extremely safe and usually successful and completely removing the tumor. However, pancreatic cancer does have a higher risk of showing up somewhere else in the body, so other treatment such as chemotherapy are also very important as part of the treatment
It depends on the type of pancreatic cancer. Please discuss with your Surgeon