Symptoms of pancreatic cancer:
Pancreatic cancer has a high tendency to be clinically silent, and the condition can become incurable before showing any significant symptoms. Furthermore, some of its initial symptoms can be mistaken for other conditions or simply ignored by patients. That is why it is important to know the symptoms that should prompt you to visit your doctor and seek a further assessment.
The main symptoms of pancreatic cancer are:
- Abdominal pain: The pancreas is located in the abdominal cavity, and its involvement in any condition whether inflammation, infection or cancer causes a special type of pain which is located at the upper center of the abdomen and radiates to the back. This pain usually worsens when you lie on your back. It may also be worse at nighttime.
- Nausea and vomiting: Although not a specific feature of pancreatic cancer, a general sense of loss of appetite, nausea, and vomiting can occur with pancreatic cancer.
- Loss of weight: One of the most alarming symptoms of cancer in general and pancreatic cancer, in particular, is the acute loss of weight. Loss of weight may be attributed to decreased appetite, but more importantly, it shows that a mass is consuming food material at an accelerated rate, signifying the risk of ongoing cancer.
- Generalized sense of weakness: A generalized sense of weakness may also be a symptom of cancer. Losing blood from cancer into the gastrointestinal tract can cause severe anemia, which causes weakness and intolerability to effort.
- Jaundice: Among all the symptoms of pancreatic cancer, jaundice is the most specific yet the latest. It occurs when the pancreatic cancer of the head obstructs the flow of bile into the small intestines. The bile then regurgitates back into the blood and causes the deep yellowish tinge of the skin, eyes, and lips.
- Diabetes: Although diabetes is not a symptom, people who have been diagnosed with diabetes recently and who have one or more of the above symptoms should check themselves for pancreatic causes of diabetes including cancer.
- Itching: When pancreatic cancer obstructs the bile duct, regurgitation of bile salts into the blood causes severe skin itching, a condition known as pruritis. Although pruritis occurs in all cases of jaundice due to obstruction, it is most pronounced in pancreatic cancer.