Newly identified symptoms of pancreatic cancer include thirst and urine colour, a conference will hear today.
Pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival rate of all cancers and nearly 70% of patients in the UK are diagnosed at a late stage, researchers at the University of Oxford say.
Dr Weiqi Liao and his team investigated symptoms linked with a diagnosis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) or pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasm (PNEN).
They used figures on over 24,000 patients aged 25 years or above diagnosed between 2000 and 2019 and compared each with ten comparable GP patients without PDAC or PNEN.
This highlighted 23 symptoms that "were significantly associated with PDAC, and nine symptoms with PNEN", report the authors in British Journal of General Practice on Monday.
"The two alarm symptoms for both tumours were jaundice and gastrointestinal bleeding," they state. "The two newly identified symptoms for PDAC were thirst and dark urine. The risk of unintentional weight loss may be longer than 2 years before the diagnosis of PNEN."
The authors conclude: "PDAC and PNEN have overlapping symptom profiles. The QCancer (pancreas) risk prediction model could be updated by including the newly identified symptoms and comorbidities, which could help GPs identify high-risk patients for timely investigation in primary care."
Dr Liao commented: “When pancreatic cancer is diagnosed earlier, patients have a higher chance of survival. It is possible to diagnose patients when they visit their GP, but both patients and GPs need to be aware of the symptoms associated with pancreatic cancer.”
Liao, W. et al. Identifying symptoms associated with the diagnosis of pancreatic exocrine and neuroendocrine neoplasms: a nested case-control study of the UK population. British Journal of General Practice 8 November 2021 doi: 10.3399/BJGP.2021.0153
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