A man was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer after he visited the emergency room for an itchy rash he believed was due to poison ivy.
According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, pancreatic cancer, which begins in the pancreas, an organ in the abdomen, is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 62,210 Americans will be diagnosed with the cancer in 2022, and 49,830 will die from it.
Early pancreatic cancer can be a “silent” disease.
According to a Columbus Dispatch story authored by the man who treated Brian, he had been itching for “many weeks” and believed it was a poison ivy reaction.
However, allergy therapies, such as antihistamines and steroids, were ineffective, Dr. Erika Kube, an emergency medicine doctor, wrote on Sunday.
She added that he was also becoming full quickly after eating and had begun daytime naps because he felt weary, which was not his typical.
According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), pancreatic cancer is commonly referred to be a “silent illness” since it lacks early indications and there are no diagnostics to diagnose it when there are no symptoms. As the cancer progresses, it may cause abdominal pain, bloating, appetite loss, fever, and unexplained weight loss.
When examining Brian, the physician’s assistant working with Kube observed that his skin and eyes were yellow. These symptoms may indicate that pancreatic cancer has compressed the common bile duct, a conduit between the liver and the intestines. When it becomes obstructed, bilirubin might accumulate, creating these symptoms.
The CT scan revealed that Brian had pancreatic cancer that was squeezing his common bile duct.
Cigarette smoking raises the risk of developing pancreatic cancer.
Kube wrote that he did not have any other family members with pancreatic cancer, nor did he have any lifestyle factors that could have elevated his risk of having the disease.
Brian’s age was not revealed in the article. People of any age can get pancreatic cancer, but 90% of those diagnosed are 55 or older. According to ASCO, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and being overweight all raise the risk of cancer.
Brian was admitted to the hospital for additional testing and so that a cancer specialist and surgeon could determine his treatment plan, which would likely involve chemotherapy and surgery.
According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), if pancreatic cancer is diagnosed at an early stage when surgical removal of the tumor is possible, 42% of patients will be alive five years following diagnosis. Those diagnosed after the cancer has spread to a distant bodily area, however, have a 3% five-year survival rate.
“The radiologist did not observe any evidence of metastasis to Brian’s liver or other organs, so I was optimistic that we had detected it early and that he would respond well to the existing treatments,” Kube wrote.
