Pancreatic cancer is a disease that almost invariably is diagnosed too late for the patient to be cured. A recent studyhas shown that it takes about 15 years forpancreatic metastatic disease to develop, which gives a broad time window of opportunity for early detection of pancreatic cancer.1 Early detection could improve the outcome for the patient,but unfortunately the disease is usually welladvanced by the time significant symptoms are established and patients delay in seeking medical advice as well as delay by the initial doctorin referring...

1380 routine abdominal or thoraco-abdominal CTs from Jan through April 2006 were reviewed. Out of these, 214 examinations (89 men, 125 women; age range 18-92 years, mean age 62.3 years) were selected according to the patient history, e.g. epigastric abdominal pain sometimes with radiation of pain to the back, nausea for a long time or weight loss,all symptoms to have pancreatic cancer as one tentative differential diagnosis. All patients were followed up for more than 4 years for the development of pancreatic cancer usingthe radiological...

In the 214 selected patients the mean measurement of the pancreatic gland in the transitional zone between corpus and cauda was 18.6 mm and the mean width of the pancreatic duct was 1.2 mm. Fifty-five of the 214 patients had a pancreatic parenchyma with thickness of 15 mm or less (mean thickness 12.3 mm, range 4.9 mm to 15 mm), figure 1.Thirty-one patients had a main pancreatic duct measuring more than 2.5 mm (mean-width 3.7 mm, range 2.6 mm to 10.2 mm), figure 2. Out...

With knowledge of slow progress in early pancreatic cancer it is worthwhile to develop new diagnostic methods with hope to cure the patient. The current investigation can unfortunately notconfirm former results that early pancreatic cancer can be foreseen by signs of atrophy of distal pancreas parenchyma or dilated main duct.3,4According to the present study,these findings are too common and none of the patients developed pancreatic cancer. Follow up programs of patients with these signs would be of no gain. The results should not be confused...

1. Yachida S, et al.Distant metastasis occurs late during the genetic evolution of pancreatic cancer.Nature. 2010;467:1114-7. 2. Warren K, et al.Current Trends in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Carcinoma of the Pancreas. The American Journal of surgery. (1983) 145: 813-818. 3. Ahn SS, et al.Indicative findings of pancreatic cancer in prediagnostic CT.Eur Radiol (2009) 19: 2448–2455. 4.Tanaka S, et al.Slight Dilatation of the Main Pancreatic Duct and Presence of Pancreatic Cysts as Predictive Signs of Pancreatic Cancer:A Prospective Study.Radiology(2010) 254: 965-972.

Lisa Hörberg Radiologistat the section of Gastrointestinal and Abdominal Radiology, Skåne University Hospital, Malmö, SWEDEN.