By Catherine Wolf, KWMU
St. Louis, MO –
Doctors at the Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis are using a new screening program to detect pancreatic cancer in people at high risk of the getting the disease. They say the program is the first of its kind in the Midwest to screen patients using both an ultrasound and an MRI.
Dayna Early is one of the program's gastroenterologists. She says using both tests will help doctors find the cancer in its earliest stages.
"Occasionally abnormalities will be found with one test that are not seen with the other so these two tests have been used together so that the yield of finding any abnormalities is increased."
Early says patients with pancreatic cancer often don't show symptoms until the cancer is at an advanced stage and harder to treat.
People with two or more close relatives with pancreatic cancer, like a parent, a child or a sibling, are considered to be at high risk of getting the disease.