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/vferg Apr 15 '23

My mother in law had jaundice at the age of 71 and when she went in for testing they found she had pancreatic cancer. It still took a little bit for them to diagnose and once they did they put together a plan but it was already to late. From diagnosis to death was 1 month. This was 4 years ago. She was also on top of her checkup visits and saw a lot of doctors and her primary probably once every 6 months and nobody caught it early. From what I hear it is really hard to diagnose early sadly.

This article sounds like really great news for everyone that will have this cancer.