Let’s take a few minutes to ponder pancreatic cancer. First, let’s learn a little bit about the pancreas and its important contributions to the body’s day-to-day functioning.

The pancreas is an oblong organ that sits across the back of the abdomen, between the stomach and the spine. It consists primarily of two types of cells. Exocrine cells make key enzymes for digestion, which they release into tiny tubes called ducts. Endocrine cells produce hormones such as insulin and glucagon, which help the body absorb glucose (sugar) for energy and control glucose levels in the blood. Endocrine cells release their hormones directly into the bloodstream.

Pancreatic cancer develops when abnormal cells grow out of control and form a mass, or tumor. About 95 percent of pancreatic cancers start in the exocrine cells. These are called pancreatic adenocarcinomas. About 7 percent of pancreatic cancers begin in the endocrine cells. Those are called pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, or PNETs.

According to the American Cancer Society, pancreatic cancer accounts for about 3 percent of all cancer diagnoses in the United States and is responsible for 7 percent of cancer deaths. The ACS estimates that about 60,430 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2021 and about 48,220 people will die from it.

Pancreatic cancer is often called a “silent cancer” because it generally has no detectable symptoms in its early stages. Consequently, it has typically progressed and affected other organs and tissues before it is diagnosed.

When present, pancreatic cancer symptoms can include: yellowing of the skin or eyes (jaundice); dark urine; pain in the abdomen or lower back; digestive upset (nausea, vomiting or indigestion); fatigue; depression; blood clots, decreased appetite; unexplained weight loss, and sudden onset of diabetes.

The cause of pancreatic cancer is unknown, but certain factors have been identified that increase your risk for developing this cancer. Pancreatic cancer risk factors include: smoking cigarettes, being obese, not exercising regularly, eating a diet high in fat and processed meats, drinking heavily, being exposed to chemicals and pesticides, having Type 2 diabetes or a chronically inflamed pancreas, being African-American, being male; being older than 55 and having a family history of pancreatic cancer..

To diagnose pancreatic cancer, your doctor will begin with a thorough review of your symptoms and medical history. The doctor will likely order a CT or MRI scan to get a detailed image of your pancreas. Other tests your doctor may recommend include endoscopic ultrasound and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP).

These tests are performed through an endoscope, a thin, flexible tube with a tiny video camera attached to its end, that is passed down your throat and into your digestive system. During these endoscopic procedures, your doctor can obtain a sample of tissue to study under a microscope to look for cancer cells. This is called a biopsy.

Blood tests are also used to look for certain tumor markers that may indicate pancreatic cancer. Tumor markers are substances that are often found in high concentrations when cancer is present. Tumor marker CA 19-9 may be helpful in diagnosing pancreatic cancer. Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is another tumor marker for pancreatic cancer, but it’s not used as often as CA 19-9.

Once a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer has been made, your doctor will assign a stage based on the test results. The stage of a cancer indicates the size of the tumor and how far it has spread from where it originated. Pancreatic cancer has four stages:

• Stage 1 – The tumors are in the pancreas only
• Stage 2 – The tumors have spread to nearby abdominal tissue or lymph nodes
• Stage 3 – The cancer has spread to major blood vessels and lymph nodes
• Stage 4 – The tumors have spread to other organs, such as the liver

Treatment for pancreatic cancer depends on the stage. The goals of treatment are to kill the cancerous cells, prevent the spread of the disease and relieve symptoms. Treatment may include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, targeted drug therapy and immunotherapy.

If the cancer is localized to the pancreas, it may be possible to eliminate the cancer cells by surgically removing all or part of the pancreas. A common procedure for pancreatic cancer is the Whipple procedure during which the surgeon removes the head of the pancreas and sometimes the entire pancreas, along with a portion of the stomach, the first part of the small intestine, the gallbladder, the bile duct and other tissue.

Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancer cells. Radiation therapy destroys cancer by focusing high-energy rays on the cancer cells. These treatments may be used before surgery to shrink tumors or after surgery to eliminate any remaining traces of the cancer.

Targeted drug therapy is a type of cancer treatment that targets proteins that control how cancer cells grow, divide and spread. Immunotherapy works with your body’s immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells.

Because pancreatic cancer is typically not diagnosed until it is in its advanced stages, it continues to be difficult to treat and cure. Fortunately, the outlook for people with this cancer is improving. Ongoing research and clinical trials, along with new treatments, are expanding the average five-year survival rate for people with pancreatic cancer.

When much of the area in and around Managua, Nicaragua was destroyed by an earthquake in December 1972, humanitarians from all over the world pitched in to help the Central American country recover.

Among them were legendary baseball player Roberto Clemente and a team of volunteers, all of whom perished when the cargo airplane they were flying in crashed on New Year’s Eve 1972.

Also coming to the aid of Nicaraguans in the wake of that disaster was a fledgling organization known as Doctors Without Borders, which faced its first test as a relief agency during the Nicaraguan tragedy.

What, precisely, is Doctors Without Borders? It is an independent humanitarian non-government agency that provides various forms of medical assistance throughout the world.

Internationally, it is known as Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), for it was founded in Paris, France in December 1971 by a group of journalists and physicians who were of the belief that much international aid was obstructed by legal barriers and was also medically inadequate.

The simplest definition of the organization comes from a MSF promotional video: “Doctors Without Borders…provides aid to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters.”

In 2009, MSF was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Accepting the award was MSF’s then President of International Council, Dr. James Orbinski, a Canadian physician and one of the many doctors, surgeons, and nurses who mostly comprise the medical sector of MSF.

MSF receives approximately three million dollars in fiscal assistance each year. More than 80 percent of those funds are used to finance MSF programs. The remainder goes to administrative, management, and fundraising duties and responsibilities.

More than 23,000 people work in all sorts of vocations for MSF, which has approximately 3,000 paid employees and 20,000 volunteers working across the globe.

Five of the 24 MSF offices are referred to by MSF officials as Operational Centers, or OCs, and all five are located on the European continent in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, Geneva and Paris.

Other MSF bureaus can be found in Toronto, Canada; New Delhi, India;  Rio de Janiero, Brazil; Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Taipei, Taiwan, which is the site of the first office on the Asian continent.

Interestingly, although MSF exists does work in more than 70 countries, the United States is not one of them. The reason for this is, according to the Doctors Without Borders website, is that “there are other organizations with experience serving these populations that are better placed to address these challenges.”

MSF employees and volunteers are independent of any political ideology and only once in the organization’s history – during the 1994 genocide between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda – have its workers asked for military intervention.

Some of the more recent examples of MSF’s work include providing medical care for those affected by the outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year; the admittance of more than 50 people to a hospital in Yemen after they were injured while publicly demonstrating against various governmental policies in that country, and the providing of various psychotherapy services to people living with extreme pressures north of the West Bank.
Much of the world’s populace continues to have problems but MSF’s work to help people cope with their problems continues as the organization seeks to provide independent, neutral and impartial medical aid where it’s needed.

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and organizations like the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) want people to know more about these dangerous injuries and their aftermath. Here’s a little information to help.

Brain injuries involve acquired damage to the brain. The damage is not the result of heredity, congenital defects or degeneration. There are many possible causes of brain injury, including certain infectious diseases, oxygen starvation, seizures, stroke, exposure to toxins, trauma and tumors. According to BIAA, more than 12 million Americans live with the impact of brain injury.

A subtype of brain injury is traumatic train injury, or TBI. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describe TBIs as brain injuries “caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head, or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the normal function of the brain.” TBIs are most often the result of falls, but can also result from being hit by an object, a motor vehicle accident or an assault.

BIAA tells us TBIs affect at least 2.5 million people each year. Every 13 seconds, someone in the US sustains a TBI. About 2.2 million people are seen in emergency rooms, 280,000 are hospitalized and 50,000 die each year due to TBIs. In addition, one of every 60 people in the US lives with a TBI-related disability.

TBIs range from mild, what we know as concussions, to severe, where there’s an extended period of unconsciousness and resulting disability. The majority of TBIs each year are concussions.

Concussions are caused by an injury, such as “a blow to the head, that jars or shakes the brain inside the skull.” Some people might have a cut or bruise on the face or head, but generally, there are no visible signs a concussion.

You don’t have to lose consciousness to have a concussion, but many people do. Sometimes, someone with a concussion will look a little dazed and might forget what happened just before the trauma occurred. Most people fully recover, some within a few hours, but some need a few weeks.

Concussions have become more common in sports on every level. This may be because of a growing emphasis on the risks for them, especially in contact sports such as football. Fortunately, many coaches and trainers have been taught how to recognize symptoms of concussion in their players and participants.

Severe brain injuries are those that cause unconsciousness or coma that generally lasts no more than a few weeks. When these injuries do not result in death, they are typically catastrophically disabling. Some patients will remain in a coma and others will enter a different type of unconscious or minimally conscious state.

People with severe brain injuries rarely recover. Those who do are typically left with a range of physical and neurological deficits that are difficult to overcome.

Brain injuries that do heal, don’t heal the same way as other injuries like broken arms or legs. Healing involves a recovery of brain function, and how much and how fast varies. No two brain injuries are alike, so each person’s response to injury and recovery from it are different.

Felicia Rodriguez and Paul Lagrone, anchors with ABC WPBF 25 News, pictured with our Senior Sales Associate Gail Goldy, “Like” Florida Health Care News!

The staff of Florida Health Care News will be enjoying a night of wonderful cuisine and music at the 29th Annual Best of Tampa Bay on Saturday April 5th at 7 p.m.  We hope to see you there!

Click below for more information:

http://www.strazcenter.org/bestoftampabay

Keep up to date on all your favorite articles at Florida Health Care News by following us on Facebook!

 

 

 

 

We are on Twitter too!

Each year, the National Business Committee for the Arts (BCA) recognizes 10 companies in the United States for their exceptional commitment to the arts. Florida Health Care News, Inc. was a finalist in the 2011 BCA TEN. Nominated by The David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts, Florida Health Care News was proud to be one of two companies in Florida included as finalists.

For more than 15 years, Florida Health Care News, Inc. has been a proud supporter of Taste the Best of Tampa Bay, proceeds from which help support the educational and outreach programs at both the Straz Center for the Performing Arts and the Patel Conservatory.* Please visit http://www.strazcenter.org/Support-Us/Fundraising-Events/Best-of-Tampa-Bay.aspx.

*Patel Conservatory’s ballet program was winner of the “Outstanding School” 2011 New York Finals Youth America Grand Prix.