Pancreatic Carcinoma

EVERY year, 112,000 Americans die of gastrointestinal cancer, and carcinoma of the pancreas accounts for 22 percent of these deaths.1 It is a disease with an extremely poor prognosis: fewer than 20 percent of affected patients survive the first year, and only 3 percent are alive five years after the diagnosis.2 In fact, of more than 60 cancer sites surveyed for the Annual Cancer Statistics Review, pancreatic carcinoma is the one with the lowest five-year survival rate.2 Despite this grim outcome, considerable progress has been made in our understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease, our ability to diagnose . . .