Original article
Signs and symptoms of pancreatic cancer: a population-based case-control study in the San Francisco Bay area☆
Section snippets
Patients and methods
This signs-and-symptoms study was part of a large population-based case-control study of 532 patients with pancreatic cancer and 1701 control participants that was conducted between 1994 and 2001 in the San Francisco Bay Area.8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 Eligibility and methods of recruitment have been described in detail elsewhere.13 Briefly, patients with pancreatic cancer aged 21–85 years were identified by the Northern California Cancer Center’s rapid case ascertainment within 1 month of diagnosis
Results
There were slightly more men than women with pancreatic cancer (1.3:1) in our symptoms study, and this was consistent with the ratio of men to women in the main study. Controls were somewhat more educated than cases, whereas marital status and race or ethnicity were similar between groups (Table 1). Symptoms were categorized under 4 broad subgroups of bile duct obstruction, upper gastrointestinal, lower gastrointestinal, and other constitutional symptoms, and percentages by case and control
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the signs and symptoms commonly reported by patients with pancreatic cancer in a population-based setting, with a goal toward promoting earlier diagnosis. Unlike most symptom studies, our participants were part of a larger population-based study that included a consecutive group of patients with pancreatic cancer and population-based control participants to better compare and highlight symptoms likely to define pancreatic cancer in the general
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dr. Andrew Ko for his thoughtful suggestions.
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Supported in part by grants no. RO1-CA59706, RO3-CA89726, and P50-CA72712 from The National Institutes of Health.