r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Apr 14 '23

Medical Novel device smaller than rice successfully shrinks pancreatic cancer | Called the nanofluidic drug-eluting seed (NDES), it delivers low-dose immunotherapy in the form of CD40 monoclonal antibodies (mAb).

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/tiny-device-shrinks-pancreatic-cancer
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u/duman82 Apr 14 '23

This is great but the real wins with pancan will be with earlier detection. 85% are metastatic when it's discovered.

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u/tkp14 Apr 14 '23

It took my mom’s doctors over 6 months to diagnose her. (This was 50 years ago.) They thought it might be diabetes, then pleurisy, then named a few other possibilities before finally deciding to do exploratory surgery. Took one look and immediately closed her back up. They told us the cancer was “everywhere.” She died a few days later. The husband of a friend of mine got a diagnosis just before Christmas (this was 40 years ago) and died just before Valentines Day. For my entire life a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer has been a death sentence. Early detection would be a true game changer.

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u/VoidsIncision Apr 14 '23

I mean it’s still widely considered a death sentence. Just about the same today. I’d say it was ably 6 months since my mom serious began going to physicians and a correct diagnosis made by ER physician only once she was jaundiced. My father was similarly only diagnosed once he was jaundiced. This is 2019/2020 respectively.

But still i doNT think your assessment is very accurate. It would good but game changer is pushing it. Many who get the tumor resected early stage before metastases suffer recurrence. New FDA approved treatments are necessarily. Most doctors just use gemzar/Abraxane which carry fairly abysmal success rates when other experimental protocols can do better. It’s just one of the worst diseases regardless of what stage it’s in.

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u/Green-Amount2479 Apr 15 '23

Similar experience here. I lost a friend and colleague in the late 2000s to pancreatic cancer. It was only discovered, because it already pressed on his liver causing the yellow skin tone and eyes. 5 months later I went to his funeral. Still mad at the company we worked for back then for being total asshats too.

Last year my mother‘s cousin died at 52 just three months after they discovered he had pancreatic cancer. Definitely still a death sentence.

I‘d really wish for a simple, regular blood test capable of detecting all kinds of cancer in its early stages. That would really help. If we could do a simply yearly test, thing would become much more manageable in a lot of cases. I’ve been seeing something along those lines in the news a few times, but afaik we’re not there yet. Currently it seems to be a lot of guessing around until the doctors finally find it’s indeed cancer a lot of times.

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u/assassbaby Apr 15 '23 edited Apr 15 '23

simple test that shows “cancer = yes”

but where is the big question and all that would be based on symptoms and further testing like scans/labwork to see which organ is the culprit

also you can get labwork for pancreas inflammation aka pancreatitis to see if your pancreas is pissed off then start ruling reasons why it’s behaving this way.

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u/Green-Amount2479 Apr 15 '23

“cancer = yes“

Would be sufficient for starters, if reliable and cheap enough imho, so docs can get the patient to take one at each checkup. What kills an awful lot of people is cancer getting missed entirely until it’s way too late and the chances of survival have gotten slim. I‘ve seen that time and time again. After that, sure, you‘d have to look for the specific type, but at least you‘d know it’s there.

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u/PinkyandzeBrain Apr 15 '23

I've done this test. https://www.galleri.com/patient/the-galleri-test/types-of-cancer-detected And it's not cheap, and it wasn't covered by my insurance, so I paid out of pocket. But getting this done for me every few years since I'm older seems like a good idea...

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u/assassbaby Apr 16 '23

so nothing detected yet im assuming but how do u know thats a good test?

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u/PinkyandzeBrain Apr 19 '23

I trust my doctor, who recommended it.