Saint Francis physician discusses pancreatic cancer's survivability and treatment

Game show host Alex Trebek, actor Patrick Swayze, singer Aretha Franklin, St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Georgia congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, comedian Jack Benny, opera's Luciano Pavarotti and astronaut Sally Ride have at least one thing in common.

All succumbed to pancreatic cancer.

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month and www.projectpurple.org is asking Americans to wear the color purple until the end of the month to raise awareness.

"It's still a highly lethal disease and pancreatic cancer continues to be one of our worst actors," said Michael J. Naughton, M.D., medical oncologist at Cape Medical Oncology, a Saint Francis Medical Partner.

Naughton, who spent 20 years at St. Louis' Washington University, has been affiliated with Saint Francis since 2019 and said Thursday he has treated hundreds of patients with the disease.

Michael J. Naughton, MD, medical oncologist at Cape Medical Oncology, a Saint Francis Medical Partner, has treated hundreds of pancreatic cancer patients over more than 20 years of practice.submitted

"We get about 60,000 cases each year in the U.S. and the mortality is approximately 48,000 annually," he said.

According to the Saint Francis Cancer Institute in Cape Girardeau, Naughton and his oncology colleagues treated 17 patients for pancreatic cancer in 2020, the most recent data available.

The challenge

"Pancreatic cancer is not a good disease for screening. There's no real way to identify those who are at increased risk," Naughton said.

"There isn't a good testing tool as there is with breast cancer, which utilizes mammograms -- and they're very effective.

"For colon cancer, we have colonoscopies. For pancreatic cancer, though, there really isn't an easy, standard, broadly applicable screening method to use."

Screening is not the only obstacle facing physicians and patients, he said.

"(Pancreatic cancer) tends to be very aggressive. Even if we detect it early, its aggressiveness undercuts our ability to cure it even in those cases where the disease is amenable to surgery," Naughton said.

"With a number of other cancers, we've found immunotherapies can be extremely effective but with pancreatic cancer, we haven't found the same success."

The reality

"(Pancreatic cancer) has about a 92% mortality rate, not 100%, so for a small number of patients, they actually can be cured," Naughton said.

"For those patients who don't have curative therapy as an option, our chemotherapy regimens can prolong life and oncologists want to offer the opportunity to control the disease and buy patients as much time as possible."

The hope

"There are large research efforts going on. Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis, for example, has a vaccine trial underway to try to crack this nut and come up with better solutions for this disease," Naughton said.

Project Purple, in a news release this week, said money is needed.

"Research funding for (pancreatic cancer) remains extremely low. (We) hope every person who has been impacted by pancreatic cancer will use the month of November to draw attention to this illness and help raise money for a cure."