Pancreatic cancer in an Asian population

Abstract

Background and objectives: Most of the available data on pancreatic cancer are from Western countries. The aim was to characterize pancreatic cancer in Asian patients and to compare it with pancreatic cancer in Caucasians.

Materials and methods: Inpatients with histologically proven pancreatic cancer were retrospectively recruited at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital from January 2005 to December 2011.

Results: The study enrolled 100 patients (male:female = 55:45, mean age 62.7 ± 12.9 years). The amount of time between symptom onset and disease diagnosis was 59.89 ± 63.12 days. The common presenting symptoms included abdominal pain or discomfort (71%), weight loss (70%), and jaundice (60%). Fifty-three of the 100 patients had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The most common metastatic organ was the liver (n = 42, 79.25%). The survival rates after 1 and 3 years were 24 and 6%, respectively. The overall median time for survival was 5.1 months (range, 3 days to 62.4 months). According to the multivariate analysis, the staging at the time of diagnosis, serum albumin level, and tumor size were found to independently affect the survival rate. Twenty-two patients underwent endoscopic ultrasound-fine-needle aspiration with the sensitivity rate of 86.4% (19/22).

Conclusion: Because pancreatic cancer in Asians may be clinically similar to the disease in Caucasians, the goals of future research of the disease may also be similar in the two populations.

Keywords: Pancreas; pancreatic cancer; presentation; prognosis; survival; treatment.

Figure 1

The age distribution patients at the time of the pancreatic cancer diagnosis

Figure 2

Distribution of the patients with regard to the length of time between onset of symptoms and establishment of diagnosis. The average time was 59.89 ± 63.12 days, ranging from 5 to 365 days (data were not available for 4 of the patients)

Figure 3

Survival duration versus the pancreatic cancer stage in the form of a Kaplan – Meier curve