Pancreatic Lesions

Abstract

About one-fifth of all gastrointestinal cancers are of pancreatic origin. More than 97% of these patients will die of the disease. The incidence of pancreatic cancer is highest between ages 50 and 70, men are more likely to develop it than women, and patients from disadvantaged social classes are more frequently affected. The etiology of pancreatic cancer is unclear, but some risk factors have been well known for a long time. Probably the most important risk factor is smoking; the risk is proportional to the amount of tobacco smoked. The majority of pancreatic cancers arise in the exocrine glandular areas of the pancreas. Eighty percent of these carcinomas correspond histologically to an adenocarcinoma. These carcinomas are generally ductal in origin and are mostly localized in the head of the pancreas. FDG-PET should be performed when the conventional work-up produces indeterminate results concerning the nature of the lesion or the presence of metastases, or if the different morphologic imaging modalities produce contradictory results [1].