Pancreatic tumour – the most significant pancreatic tumour is malignant pancreatic cancer; less common are hormonally active or inactive neuroendocrine and carcinoid tumours, and other, mainly cystic, pancreatic tumours.
The main feature of pancreatic tumours is that they develop almost completely without symptoms for a very long time.
By the time they cause symptoms (abdominal pain radiating to the back, weight loss, loss of appetite, jaundice, recurrent deep vein thromboses), the disease is usually already very advanced.
A fortunate exception may be smaller tumours in the pancreashead, next to the common bile duct– these cause jaundice relatively early (by compressing the bile duct), so they can be detected sooner.
Hormonally active pancreastumours can cause quite intense symptoms despite their small size, as a result of the hormonally active substances they produce.
