Pancreatic cancer: Sven-Goran Eriksson, the symptoms and the fight with one of the most insidious forms of cancer

«They all understood that I have a bad disease and they think it's cancer. In fact it is.” Swedish football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson spoke publicly about the illness he is facing during an interview on Swedish radio P1. Eriksson revealed he has inoperable pancreatic cancer and that he could have less than a year to live, as he reports APnews: “At best I still have a year left, at worst maybe a little less,” he said.

The 75-year-old former coach of the English football team explained that he discovered it due to a sudden collapse after having done a five kilometer run the previous day. At the hospital, doctors told him he had also had a stroke.

Already in February last year he declared that he would reduce his public appearances due to health problems. Despite the situation, Eriksson is trying to think positively. “I could sit at home and brood about it all the time, get grumpy, think I'm unlucky and things like that,” he explained. «It's the simplest thing to do… But no: you have to look at things in a positive way, without wallowing in adversity. This, obviously, is the most difficult challenge.”

The form of cancer diagnosed by the football coach, the same one that took Gianluca Vialli from us a year ago, is one of the “on the rise” neoplasms.

The current data is worrying and it is feared that the pancreatic cancer could become the second leading cause of death from cancer worldwide by 2030 over 560 thousand cases worldwide in 2025.

Pancreatic cancer, difficult to detect

What makes pancreatic cancer particularly insidious it is the fact that it is a silent, aggressive and still little-known neoplasm. In 80% of cases it is diagnosed only in an advanced stage due to the substantial absence or non-specificity of the symptoms. Even the actress Eleonora Giorgi, being treated for this same tumor, recently said that she discovered it by chance while she was having checks due to a persistent cough.

Warning signs to watch out for

Although difficult to diagnose, pancreatic cancer can generate warning signs that are essential to know for timely treatment. The important thing is to learn to listen to your body to recognize symptoms that should not be underestimated. Here are the cases:

• a backache or a deep pain in the upper abdomen which represent more than a nuisance.
• a loss of weight and appetite sudden
• a yellow color of the skin and eyes
• a itching unusual
• a change in digestion and in bowel habits

What stage is the research at?

To date, pancreatic cancer has the lowest five-year survival rate from diagnosis among all oncological diseases. It hovers around the 10-12%, a very different percentage from the 88% of breast cancer. Only an early diagnosis can therefore allow a good five-year survival chance.

Research However, it has also made important steps in recent years, discovering for example that some groups of people are more at risk of developing the disease due to familiarity (presence of multiple cases of pancreatic cancer in the family) or because they are carriers of mutations in genes such as Brca, Cdkn2A and others also involved in the development of this type of tumor.

Recent studies have also shown that the presence of recent onset diabetes you hate long-standing diabetes no longer well compensated with therapy it is another important factor that must alert those who follow the patient to a scrupulous evaluation of the pancreas.

Ultimately, the identification of particular categories of subjects at risk and the surveillance conducted with the right means, and with the correct timing, can lead to early diagnoses and consequently to a higher percentage of cases on which it is possible to intervene surgically and to higher survival of patients.