Can Surgery Cure Cancer in the Tail of the Pancreas?

Siddhartha Mukherjee says surgery can cure some pancreatic cancers that start in the tail. He has patients who have lived 10 years after a Whipple when the tumor sat far from the crowded head of the pancreas and was found incidentally.

The pancreas is a long organ shaped like a leaf in the gut. Cancers in the head sit closer to the intestines and tend to show up with pain and jaundice. Cancers in the tail sit farther away and tend to be found incidentally. Mukherjee says tail tumors are less involved with other organs, so they are an anatomically distinct cancer and some patients can live longer after surgery. The head is where intestines run downward and blood vessels cross. He compares it to a traffic accident at the most complicated intersection below the neck, and an accident there does not resolve easily. Peter Attia had said probably only 5% of all comers are surgically cured, and asked whether the 95% caught too late could be found earlier. Mukherjee agrees. The outcome depends on the anatomy.