Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, an annual campaign to highlight the signs and symptoms of a disease that is often diagnosed too late

As with all cancers, detection as early as possible leads to the best chances of survival – but pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to detect. As a result, it currently has the worst survival outcome for any of the 21 most common cancers, and around 80 per cent of pancreatic cancer patients are diagnosed at a point when the disease has already spread to other organs.

That is why it is important for people to follow up symptoms as soon as they emerge.

Main symptoms of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer may not have any symptoms, or they might be hard to spot. Symptoms of pancreatic cancer can include:

• the whites of your eyes or your skin turn yellow (jaundice), and you may also have itchy skin, darker pee and paler poo than usual
• loss of appetite or losing weight without trying to
• feeling tired or having no energy

Other symptoms can affect your digestion, such as:

• feeling or being sick
• diarrhoea or constipation, or other changes in your poo
• pain at the top part of your tummy and your back, which may feel worse when you're eating or lying down and better when you lean forward
• symptoms of indigestion, such as feeling bloated

For more information, please see this page on the NHS website.

Published: Nov 4, 2024