Mayo Clinic: When people find out — usually from a diagnostic scan looking at
something else — that they have a lesion in their pancreas that could
morph into pancreatic cancer,
they can panic. They insist on having frequent CT scans and biopsies to
monitor the lesion, or they ask for surgery. Physicians also don’t know
if these abnormalities are dangerous, so the patients end up in surgery
having part of their pancreas removed. Often the lesion is nothing to
worry about. But a team of international physicians, led by researchers at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Jacksonville, Florida,
has developed a profile of the patient who would be most at risk of
developing lesions that are most likely to develop into cancer. Their
analysis is published online today in the journal Digestive and Liver Diseases.
“The factors we found that increase risk of pancreatic cancer now
allow us to separate patients as either low or high risk,” says the
study’s senior author, Michael B. Wallace, M.D., MPH, a gastroenterologist
at Mayo Clinic. “High-risk patients can then be scanned and biopsied
more frequently or can opt for surgery, but low-risk patients don’t need
such surveillance. They can be watched much less intensively.”
“Pancreatic cancer is difficult to detect early — most patients are
diagnosed at later stages when its 95 percent fatal — so we’re seeking
ways to understand who is at risk,” Dr. Wallace says. “Our study offers
valuable insight into the problem.”
The lesions evaluated in this study that can become cancerous
are known as intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms. They are common.
“Between 10 and 40 percent of people have them,” Dr. Wallace says.
“Obviously the vast majority of those folks are not developing
pancreatic cancer, which is not that common.”
To find ways to identify patients at high risk, Dr. Wallace and his
collaborators, which include physicians at hospitals throughout the
United States and Europe, examined data on 1,126 patients diagnosed with
the lesions in the pancreas.
Of this group, only 84 were found to have invasive pancreatic cancer.
Those patients had all or some of the following factors that put them
at high risk: a history of smoking and obesity, and two symptoms of the
disease—jaundice (yellowing of the eyes and skin) and steatorrhea (fat
droplets in stool indicating that the pancreas was not producing
sufficient digestive enzyme). Additionally, a larger cyst size on an
imaging scan, cysts in the main pancreatic duct, and the presence of
nodules on the cyst wall were all risk factors. Abdominal pain, which
had been considered a risk factor, turned out not to be one in this
study — patients at low-risk may have complained of such pain.
“This study refines the current guidelines for treating of these
lesions, which are not very specific,” Dr. Wallace says. “Hopefully, we
can assure worried patients who have these common lesions that they are
not at high risk.”
Co-authors from Mayo Clinic include: Maria Moris, M.D.; Massimo Raimondo, M.D.; Timothy A. Woodward, M.D.;
Verna Skinner. Co-authors from San Raffaele Scientific Institute,
Milano, Italy include: Paolo G. Arcidiacono, M.D.; Maria C. Petrone,
M.D. Claudio De Angelis, M.D. The co-author from Azienda
Universitario-Ospedaliera San Giovanni Battista, Torino, Italy is Selene
Manfre, M.D. The co-author from the University of Bologna/Hospital of
Imola, Imola, Italy is Pietro Fusaroli, M.D.