Innovations in treatment for pancreatic cancer and chronic conditions within the pancreas give physicians a positive outlook for the future. By identifying patients at higher risk of issues, early treatment is possible and can lead to better outcomes.
I think the future looks bright for patients with pancreatic cancer. For many years, we only had one or two regiments for treatment. Now with innovation, we're able to offer a portfolio of treatment options and individualized treatment care, especially for patients with pancreatic masses. Conditions that we commonly see in the pancreas clinic are acute and chronic pancreatitis. Other very common conditions that we see are pancreatic cystic lesions. And sometimes these patients, they have common conditions that present differently. So they need a different type of care. And sometimes they're just very weird conditions that we know how to direct the care because we have experience with them because of the hive all in patients that we see for evaluation of lesions in the pancreas, whether they're mass or cysts, we will often perform an endoscopic ultrasound that really gives us the highest resolution of the pancreas. We are also doing a lot of advances with artificial intelligence. It helps detect or improve the current modalities that we have, such as images and endoscopic ultrasound. If someone is found to have something in the pancreas, we're looking for for a more minimally invasive approach to treatment of lesions, we are now able to offer endoscopic treatment so we can put a small needle into a mass or even a cystic lesion. Not only are we taking that tissue or fluid off for analysis, but we can use those needles to then deliver novel chemo therapeutic agents or novel treatment options or a blade of therapies in the form of heat or photodynamic therapy. The crux of treating patients with pancreatic cancer is detecting it early to identify patients who are at high risk for pancreatic cancer and enroll them through a surveillance program. My goal is that we can further establish what we should do in order to detect these lesions before and provide a better care for these patients.
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