When you are given a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, one of the first things you will discover with your doctor is where the cancer is located, and what stage the disease is at in terms of profession. Figuring out the stage that your cancer is in will assist your doctor in coming up with the most appropriate form of treatment for your specific condition. In many cases, it can also improve your chances of recovery significantly. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is the latest point of pancreatic cancer, or "end-stage".
Most of the time, stage 4 pancreatic cancer is diagnosed quite late because it was impossible to recognize any symptoms of the disease during the earlier stages. Unfortunately, pancreatic cancer at stage 4 will mean that your disease has spread throughout your body into other organs, often to the lungs or liver.
Importantly, though there are no ways to cure stage 4 pancreatic cancer, that does not mean that treatment options aren't available, and you could end up adding extra time to your life when you consider some of them.
Treatments Your Doctor May Recommend:
If you have stage 4 pancreatic cancer, then your doctor is likely to recommend chemotherapy as one of the first potential treatments you can try to manage your condition. This treatment makes use of drugs that work to kill off the cancer cells and prevent them from multiplying within your body. Usually, people have chemotherapy intravenously, but it is possible to take this treatment in pill form too. Chemotherapy is regularly given to cancer patients along with radiation, which is a procedure that uses radioactive rays to destroy cancer cells.
Besides options for preventing the spread of the cancer, your doctor might also suggest treatments for palliative care. In other words, these are options for reducing the kind of pain that you will experience as a result of late stage pancreatic cancer. During these treatments, you might be given injections of pain medication, or the nerves that lead to the pain may be cut off to help give you a better quality of life. In the same way, many forms of palliative surgery are available. These surgeries unfortunately cannot cure or remove the late stage cancer from your body, but they can help to make your life more comfortable by removing problems and getting rid of blockages.
For example, bypass surgery might be a solution for patients who are suffering from the results of a tumor that is blocking the bile duct. In most circumstances, the liver is responsible for releasing bile, which can help to promote healthy digestion. This bile is stored within the gallbladder and can move through the intestines and be excreted from the body in stool. When tumors are blocking the small intestine, then you can suffer from a bile build up that leads to jaundice and a severe amount of discomfort. Using bypass surgery, a doctor can connect the gall bladder or bile duct to the small intestine directly, in order to move around the block.