The pancreas is a 15 cm long organ located behind the stomach. It has an exocrine function to secrete digestive juices and an endocrine function to secrete hormones. Pancreatic juice is delivered to the duodenum through the pancreatic duct.
Diseases include pancreatitis (acute and chronic) and pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is diagnosed by blood tests, imaging tests, endoscopy and pathology (cytology). Unfortunately, early detection is difficult because symptoms are common, such as abdominal pain and abdominal discomfort, and in most cases the stage of the disease is advanced when obvious symptoms appear.
It would be nice if a method could be found to detect pancreatic cancer at an early stage, but this is not yet possible. Tumor markers related to pancreatic cancer include “CA19-9,” “SPan-1,” “DUPAN2,” and “CEA.” Among these, CA19-9, which is highly accurate in detecting pancreatic cancer, is used to determine treatment efficacy and to predict whether metastasis has occurred. However, it is currently difficult to diagnose early-stage pancreatic cancer using tumor marker tests based on CA19-9.
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