• Neoadjuvant therapy versus surgery first for resectable and borderline resectable pancreatic cancer: For pancreatic cancers that look removable, doctors debate whether to operate at once and give chemotherapy afterwards, or to give chemotherapy first.
• New-onset diabetes as a signal of pancreatic cancer (and the ENDPAC score): A pancreatic cancer can cause diabetes before any other symptom, so new diabetes after the age of 50, especially with weight loss rather than weight gain, is a recognised warning sign.
• Pancreatic cancer: the failed and stopped programmes and why: Pancreatic cancer has a long list of phase 3 trials that added a new drug to standard chemotherapy and found nothing: a stroma-degrading enzyme, an interleukin-10, a stemness inhibitor, a BTK inhibitor, a metabolic inhibitor, an anti-fibrotic antibody, two vaccines and erlotinib in three settings.
• Classical versus basal-like (squamous) subtypes of pancreatic cancer, and GATA6: Gene expression divides pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma into two main types: classical, the commoner, which keeps its pancreatic identity and responds better to chemotherapy, and basal-like or squamous, which has lost it and carries a worse outlook.
• Resectability classes for pancreatic cancer (NCCN anatomical criteria and the 2017 international consensus): Surgeons class a pancreatic cancer as resectable, borderline resectable or locally advanced by how far it wraps around the arteries and veins behind the pancreas on the CT scan, measured in degrees of contact.
• R0 and R1 margins in pancreatic cancer: the 1 mm rule and standardised specimen reporting: After a pancreatic cancer is removed, the pathologist checks whether cancer reaches the cut edges of the specimen.
• Vascular resection in pancreatic cancer surgery (portal and superior mesenteric vein resection; arterial resection): When a pancreatic cancer touches or narrows the big vein behind the pancreas, surgeons can cut out that segment of vein and rebuild it during the operation, which turns a borderline tumour into a removable one.
• Pancreas protocol CT (pancreatic protocol CT, dual-phase thin-slice CT with structured reporting): A pancreas protocol CT is a scan tuned for the pancreas: thin slices taken at two timed moments after contrast dye so that the tumour, the arteries and the veins all show up sharply.
• Pancreatic cancer trials open today (registry snapshot and UK sites): Every phase 2 or 3 interventional trial that was recruiting, about to open or still running for pancreatic cancer on ClinicalTrials.gov in September 2026, with the hospitals in the United Kingdom that take part named where the registry lists them.
• Pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy (PERT, pancreatin, Creon) for pancreatic exocrine insufficiency: why and how to take it: Most pancreatic cancers stop the gland's digestive enzymes reaching the gut, so fat passes through undigested and weight falls.

Staging: Pancreas-protocol CT, chest CT and CA 19-9; endoscopic ultrasound with biopsy when tissue is needed before treatment; biliary stenting only for cholangitis, deep jaundice or delayed surgery.

Biomarker results to ask for: Pancreas-protocol CT for vessel contact and metastases (defines resectability), CA 19-9 before and after surgery (prognosis, response, recurrence), Resection margin status (R0 versus R1) and lymph node ratio, Germline testing for BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2, ATM and Lynch genes in every patient, Tumour KRAS, TP53, CDKN2A and SMAD4 status (prognostic; SMAD4 loss favours distant spread), Circulating tumour DNA after surgery (investigational marker of residual disease).

Scans and tests linked to this cancer: CT (computed tomography), Endoscopic ultrasound and EBUS systems, Germline (hereditary) testing, Liquid biopsy (ctDNA), High-risk pancreatic surveillance (CAPS / PRECEDE), MRD / molecular residual disease testing.

Bring copies of scan reports, pathology and blood results, and a list of every medicine and supplement.

• Surgery: Pancreatoduodenectomy for head tumours, distal pancreatectomy with splenectomy for body and tail tumours, with regional lymphadenectomy; open, laparoscopic or robotic in high-volume centres. (Whipple procedure (pancreaticoduodenectomy), Robotic & minimally invasive surgery, Lymphadenectomy (lymph node dissection), Resection margins (R0 / R1 / R2))
• Adjuvant chemotherapy: Six months of modified FOLFIRINOX for fit patients (PRODIGE 24); gemcitabine plus capecitabine (ESPAC-4) or gemcitabine alone (CONKO-001) for those who cannot tolerate it, started within twelve weeks of surgery. (FOLFIRINOX / mFOLFIRINOX, PRODIGE 24 / CCTG PA6, Gemcitabine, Capecitabine, Neoadjuvant / adjuvant / perioperative, CONKO-001, ESPAC-4)
• Neoadjuvant chemotherapy: Considered for tumours with high-risk features (large size, very high CA 19-9, suspicious nodes) and increasingly offered in trials for all resectable disease; PREOPANC and NORPACT-1 are the evidence for and against. (FOLFIRINOX / mFOLFIRINOX, PREOPANC-1, Gemcitabine + nab-paclitaxel, Neoadjuvant / adjuvant / perioperative, NORPACT-1)
• Germline testing: Offered to every patient at diagnosis; carriers of BRCA, PALB2 or ATM variants receive platinum-based chemotherapy and their relatives are offered testing and surveillance. (Germline (hereditary) testing, Germline BRCA mutation (gBRCA), High-risk pancreatic surveillance (CAPS / PRECEDE))
• Follow-up: CA 19-9 and CT every three to six months for two years then less often; recurrence is treated as metastatic or locally advanced disease. (CA 19-9, CT (computed tomography))

From the standard of care recorded for this cancer; which apply depends on your stage and biomarkers. Ask which the team recommends and why.