Ultrasound Ablation in Advanced Pancreatic Cancer Patients – What should be the Next Step.
In the last decades the treatment for many diseases has changed dramatically. Open surgery procedures with high morbidity and complication rates, suboptimal clinical results based on large impairment for the patients were replaced by drug treatment or minimally invasive techniques.
Examples such as interventional cardiology procedures in acute myocardial infarction, interventional endoscopies in the treatment of hepato-biliary tract diseases, eradication of Helicobacter pylori for gastric ulcer using drugs are good evidence that the words of William Osler “Diseases that harm require therapies that harm less” are valid now-a-days.
Pancreatic Cancer is one of the most aggressive malignant diseases which survival rate, clinical results and treatment has not improved substantially in the past 40 years. Radical surgery is still the only curative method for pancreatic cancer in early stage.
Estimated, only 20% of all cases with PC in early stage are suitable for surgical resection at the time of diagnosis, still the expected 5-year survival rate remains 5-20%. The other 80% of cases with advanced PC have an expected median survival time of only a few months and almost 0% of 5 year-survival rate when effective alternative treatment methods are missing.
In those patients with unresectable advanced pancreatic cancer, there is still an urgent need for effective therapies that should not only achieve sufficient local tumor control but also improve local symptoms and quality of life as well as alleviate tumor-associated pain.
Pancreas Open J. 2015; 1(1): 7-8. doi: 10.17140/POJ-1-103
