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Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma: CT and PET/CT

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Pancreatic Cancer
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Abstract

During the last years, startling epidemiologic facts find pancreatic adenocarcinoma to be on the rise with rapidly increasing relevance for public health. Recent projections for the year 2030 predict pancreatic adenocarcinoma to range among the top three deadly cancers in the Western world (Matrisian and Berlin, Am Soc Clin Oncol Educ Book 35:e205–215, 2016; Rahib et al., Cancer Res 74:2913–2921, 2014). As a result, early detection, correct staging, and adequate peri- and posttherapeutic imaging strategies must play a very important role in present and future oncology in general and in pancreatic adenocarcinoma in particular. This will be outlined and discussed in this chapter. Early tumor detection is one of the key factors for a potential cure by surgical resection. Major advances in MDCT (multidetector computed tomography), including 2D and 3D reconstruction, are highly useful in improving staging and postsurgical care. PET-CT is particularly helpful in differentiating between malignant and benign in complex clinical problems such as discriminating between autoimmune pancreatitis and pancreatic adenocarcinoma, identifying distant metastastic disease in the pretheraupeutic staging workup, and, furthermore, discriminating between benign fibrotic tissue and tumor recurrence in the follow-up after surgical resection.

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Richter, G.M. (2018). Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma: CT and PET/CT. In: Neoptolemos, J., Urrutia, R., Abbruzzese, J., Büchler, M. (eds) Pancreatic Cancer. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6631-8_90-1

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