These comments are made for the purpose of discussion and should NOT be used as recommendations for or against therapies or other treatments. An individual patient is always advised to consult their own physician. My pa has a pancreatic ca. Pancreatic cancer is one of the more discouraging tumors in medicine. It tends to be fairly advanced prior to being detected and with rare exception has few symptoms.
Treatment is currently purely surgical.
That is, if it is not cured by surgery there is no effective chemotherapy or radiotherapy. There are usually some experimental protocols for advanced pancreatic cancer due to its abysmal prognosis. Deciding how long someone will live with any cancer is pure guess-work. While experience can help-the will to live of the patient, the speed of the cancer's growth, and other factors impossible to predict make estimate difficult. Physicians are reduced to predicting outcome based on large population samples-not based on any one individual.