Increasing Incidence and Stable Mortality of Pancreatic Cancer in Young Americans

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-24-00635 One explanation for rising pancreatic cancer cases in adults under 40 Younger adults have for years been diagnosed with cancer at progressively higher rates, a development that has alarmed and puzzled experts. Pancreatic cancer is no exception to that trend, my colleague Jonathan Wosen writes. But while this rise could reflect a true increase in the incidence of the deadly disease, a team led by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital argues for a different explanation: Doctors are catching nonlethal cases they would have otherwise missed, a phenomenon known as overdiagnosis. The research team looked back on data from 2001 to 2020 stored in U.S. Cancer Statistics, a database of cancer registries, for adults aged 15 to 39. They found that while the incidence of pancreatic cancer cases and surgery to remove tumors increased, most of the growth came from early-stage cancers. Notably, pancreatic cancer deaths didn’t rise, nor did late-stage disease. The findings, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, don’t definitively answer why doctors are detecting more early-stage disease, though the authors suspect that physicians are catching cases via medical imaging. They add that unnecessary pancreatic surgery risks damaging the organ. With rising cancer rates in younger adults, experts emphasize better tests Screening procedures like colonoscopies and mammograms are still ‘vastly underutilized’ https://www.statnews.com/2024/11/18/with-rising-cancer-rates-in-younger-adults-experts-emphasize-better-tests/?utm_campaign=morning_rounds&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9dXxiwIPbo3SH_bnCr65idyG5dyzWRZX4ooIoay3QWL0Xe6oL-JmfejeAnwMxbCHMnMa6BOPKfhado_jNaIGwzHWkAMw&_hsmi=334535734&utm_content=334535734&utm_source=hs_email