Symptoms of pancreatic cancer – the main feature of pancreatic cancer is that it develops almost completely without symptoms for a very long time.
By the time pancreatic cancer causes 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 pancreas head, next to the common bile duct – these cause jaundice relatively early (by compressing the bile duct), so they can be detected sooner.
It is a disease with a poor prognosis.
