Long-time survival of a patient with metastatic pancreatic cancer: a case report

Pancreatic cancer is a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. It does not cause any symptoms in the early stage, and later symptoms are nonspecific, thus the disease is usually diagnosed when already advanced. In 2008, pancreatic cancer ranked eighth on the list of the 10 most common cancers among men in Croatia and tenth on the list of the most common cancers among Croatian women. Pancreatic cancer has a poor prognosis, with a survival time of only 6-8 months for metastatic disease. Gemcitabine is the standard chemotherapeutic option. Other chemotherapeutic agents include5-fluorouracil and leucovorin. In this paper, we present a case of a patient diagnosed with locally advanced and metastatic pancreatic cancer, who is still alive and currently receives his fourth line of chemotherapy 5 years after the diagnosis. Following disease progression on gemcitabine chemotherapy, he was treated with chemoradiotherapy which, however, had no effect. We then applied cisplatin monochemotherapy which offered excellent disease control, was well tolerated by the patient and, although somewhat obsolete in this form, showed to be a valuable chemotherapeutic option.