Risk Determination for Pancreatic Cancer

摘要

Pancreatic cancer represents one of the leading causes of cancerrelated deaths worldwide and constitutes a major public health problem. Despitethe advances in diagnosis and treatment, the overall five-year survival remainslow, thus leading the focus of medical research towards the identification and modificationof potential risk factors. This year, in ASCO Annual Meeting two interesting studieswere presented. Ghani et al. (Abstract #e15183) sought to investigate theeffect of smoking on chemotherapy response in patients with metastatic pancreaticcancer, while Walker et al. (Abstract #4117) presented the results of theirstudy regarding the effect of statin use in the prevention of pancreatic cancer.Both studies concluded to useful results that along with the existing literaturemay further stimulate medical research towards better recognition of risk factorsand the application of this knowledge in the clinical practice.