Pancreatic cancer has long proved the least survivable of the most common forms of cancer, in part because it tends to spread before symptoms appear. Surgery has offered the longest remissions, but for many people with advanced cancer, an operation wasn’t an option. Now, thanks to improvements in chemotherapy, radiation and surgical techniques, even this most recalcitrant of cancers is starting to budge, says Mark Truty, M.D., a Mayo Clinic gastrointestinal surgeon. Dr. Truty and his colleagues are teaming with Mayo vascular surgeons to perform complex tumor removal operations on pancreatic cancer patients who in the past would have been considered inoperable — and they are seeing survival times rise. For more information, see the Mayo Clinic News Network.

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