Early chemo can extend life

PANCREATIC cancer patients could live more than twice as long if given chemotherapy and radiation treatment before surgery.

For those whose tumours were removed successfully, having chemotherapy and radiotherapy after surgery provided an extra 16.8 months of life.

But those given the treatments before surgery lived for three and a half years, or 42.1 months in total, according to a study by the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. The findings, based on 246 patients, were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference and were described as a ‘step forward’.