The symptoms are late and therefore the diagnosis is made when the tumor is already in an advanced stage. First, the retroperitoneal location of the pancreas, deep in the abdomen, protects growing tumors from detection. There are four fundamental challenges that underlie the high mortality. Despite ongoing developments, PDAC remains one of the most difficult tumors to treat, and the five-year survival rate is less than 10%.
Moreover, surgery is still associated with high post-operative morbidity. Complete surgical resection significantly prolongs survival, but the tumor is often diagnosed at an advanced stage and only a small percentage of patients are therefore candidates for surgery. The commonly used term "pancreatic cancer" usually refers to ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which represents 85% of all pancreatic tumor. In particular the number of both deaths and incident cases peaked at the ages of 65-69 years in males, whereas the peak in females was observed at the ages of 75-79 years. It is an age-related neoplasm and this trend is similar between males and females.
Pancreatic cancer is currently the seventh leading cause of cancer death worldwide and the fourth following lung, colorectal and breast cancers in the United States and Europe.