Steve Jobs has battled a rare form of pancreatic cancer for years, undergoing a series of aggressive treatments, including a liver transplant, and surviving longer than many others with the disease.
Jobs suffers from a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which accounts for only about 5% of the 43,000 pancreatic cancers diagnosed each year, and is generally more curable than more common types of pancreatic cancer, says Margaret Tempero, a pancreatic cancer expert at the University of California-San Francisco and former president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Patients with the most common form of pancreatic cancer often live less than a year, says Tempero, who hasn’t treated Jobs.
“People can co-exist with this disease for years,” says Richard Goldberg, an expert in neuroendocrine tumors at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who has not treated Jobs. Only about 10% of people with metastatic disease — cancer that has spread around the body — survive this type of tumor, Goldberg says.
“Given his will to dominate, you’d have to speculate that he must not be doing well,” says James Abbruzzese, a pancreatic cancer expert at Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Abbruzzese, one of the USA’s leading pancreatic cancer specialists, consulted on Jobs’ care early in the course of his treatment, but has not participated in Jobs’ treatment in several years.
Jobs has undergone aggressive treatment for the cancer, which he first acknowledged in 2004. Jobs had surgery to treat the original cancer, then underwent a liver transplant in 2009.
Liver transplants for this kind of tumor are “occasionally successful, but it’s a real long shot,” Tempero says.
In rare cases, a liver transplant may cure the patient’s cancer, if it hasn’t spread around the body, Abbruzzese says.
Actor Patrick Swayze died of the more common type of pancreatic cancer in 2009, as did opera star Luciano Pavarotti in 2007. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also has had pancreatic cancer.
Doctors don’t know what causes neuroendocrine tumors, Abbruzzese says.
Those at greater risk include men, African-Americans, people older than 50, diabetics and those with a family history of pancreatic cancer. Tempero notes that the Food and Drug Administration approved two new drugs for neuroendocrine tumors, sunitinib and everolimus, this year.
Jobs battles with rare pancreatic cancer, privacy
Steve Jobs has battled a rare form of pancreatic cancer for years, undergoing a series of aggressive treatments, including a liver transplant, and surviving longer than many others with the disease.
By Peter Burrows and Josh Tyrangiel Ever since his surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, Steve Jobs has dismissed questions about his health as irrelevant. Jobs battles with rare pancreatic cancer, privacy
Steve Jobs has battled a rare form of pancreatic cancer for years, undergoing a series of aggressive treatments, including a liver transplant, and surviving longer than many others with the disease.
Jobs suffers from a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which accounts for only about 5% of the 43,000 pancreatic cancers diagnosed each year, and is generally more curable than more common types of pancreatic cancer, says Margaret Tempero, a pancreatic cancer expert at the University of California-San Francisco and former president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Patients with the most common form of pancreatic cancer often live less than a year, says Tempero, who hasn't treated Jobs.
Only about 10% of people with metastatic disease — cancer that has spread around the body — survive this type of tumor, Goldberg says.
Jobs has undergone aggressive treatment for the cancer, which he first acknowledged in 2004. Jobs had surgery to treat the original cancer, then underwent a liver transplant in 2009.
In rare cases, a liver transplant may cure the patient's cancer, if it hasn't spread around the body, Abbruzzese says.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also has had pancreatic cancer.
Doctors don't know what causes neuroendocrine tumors, Abbruzzese says.
Those at greater risk include men, African-Americans, people older than 50, diabetics and those with a family history of pancreatic cancer.
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