Muhammad Wasif Saif, Tamas A Gonda
Pancreatic cancer presents at an advanced stage in majority of the patients, hence resulting in a very dismal prognosis. Novel and effective methods to detect and screen pancreatic cancer and its precursors are warranted. The U.S. Multi-Society Task Force recommends against routine screening for pancreatic cancer in asymptomatic adults using abdominal palpation, ultrasonography, or serologic markers. Moreover, the screening for persons with hereditary predisposition to develop pancreatic cancer has not been validated. Herein, the authors summarize the data presented at the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in detecting early stage pancreatic cancer (Abstracts #187 and #193).
