What are my chances of survival from pancreatic cancer?

Because pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose, the disease is frequently undetected in its earliest stage, and has already spread, or metastasized, by the time it is diagnosed. Once pancreatic cancer has spread to the liver, median survival for patients is five to six months. At New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, new treatments developed in the laboratory have doubled this survival period in initial studies.

The lifetime risk of a pancreatic cancer diagnosis is 1.4%, or one in 72 people. According to the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (NCI's SEER) Cancer Statistics Review, the five-year survival following a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is 6%. If the disease is localized, then the five-year survival is 22%. Patients with regional spread to lymph nodes have a five-year survival rate of 9%. Those with distant, metastatic pancreatic cancer have a 2% survival rate at five years following diagnosis.