Pancreatic Cancer

Never seen anyone diagnosed with pancan without a biopsy. Pancan can be suspected based on scans but tissue analysis is the key to accurate diagnosis.

does anyone know how successful cyberknife is for pancreatic cancer? My husband had 12 rounds of folfirinox and it shrunk tumor down to size of a quarter but is still encasing the artery..his ca19-9 numbers are 26 so hoping this cyberknife will finish shrinking tumor.

Not sure about cyberknife since I never had it but I just recently had a Whipple after 8 rounds of chemo and 28 radiation treatments. They had hoped mine would shrink away from the vein and it did indeed shrink by half but never disengaged. At one point my CA 19-9 was as low as 7 but after the biopsy following surgery they found there was still quite a lot of cancer there. They ended up grafting a bovine vein because none of my useable veins was right. I really hope your husband's low CA 19-9 and the shrinkage means they have killed most of the cancer and that you get an answer on your cyberknife question.

Thanks so much...prayers for you for Gods healing touch.

Thanks for your willingness to talk about your surgery and treatment..it helps those of us facing the same. Tomorrow my husband is due to have the Whipple procedure. But as you have said surgeon doesn't know what he will encounter until he gets in there. It seems with this disease there are new daunting prospects on going. My husband had a similar course to you prior to surgery. I hope we can continue to share information on recovery from surgery. Thanks.

Hi Anne, thinking of you and your husband. I hope surgery went well.

I think that @wrolsen might have had cyberknife treatment for pancreatic cancer and could share his experiences.

mcendroski, is your husband scheduled to start cyberknife treatments?

Thanks appreciate good wishes. Unfortunately surgery did not go as anticipated. My husband did not have a Whipple because surgeon found live tumor encasing an artery and he was not able to remove it. Instead IORT was done and a new connection between stomach and small intestine. We have had to scramble to understand what this means. And we will be seeking second opinions.. there is something about this disease which does not allow for any predictability. I guess the silver lining is that this is a less challenging procedure to. Recover from.

Oh Annie, that must’ve been disappointing news for both of you to hear. Thank goodness they were able to do an Intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT). Let me know if you would like to contact information for a second opinion at a Mayo Clinic and I’ll send you the link.

How is your husband’s recovery going? How are YOU doing?

Anne I've heard a lot of people mention that Dr. Mark Truty at Mayo in Rochester handles a lot of these more difficult cases. You might consider getting a second opinion from him. He wasn't my surgeon but I've read about him.