Thanks to new medicines, life expectancy after pancreas removal surgery is rising. Your outlook will depend on the condition you have. One study found that the seven-year survival rate after surgery for people with noncancerous conditions like pancreatitis was 76 percent.
But for people with pancreatic cancer, the seven-year survival rate was 31 percent. The pancreas is a gland located in your abdomen, underneath your stomach. Surgery to remove your whole pancreas is called a total pancreatectomy. Because other organs sit close to your pancreas, the surgeon may also remove:. You may need to go on clear liquids and take a laxative the day before your surgery. This diet cleans out your bowels. You may also need to stop taking certain medicines a few days before surgery, especially blood thinners like aspirin and warfarin Coumadin.
After your pancreas and other organs are removed, your surgeon will reconnect your stomach and the rest of your bile duct to the second part of your intestine — the jejunum. This connection will allow food to move from your stomach into your small intestine.
If you have pancreatitis, you may have the option of getting an islet auto transplant during your surgery. Islet cells are the cells in your pancreas that produce insulin. In auto transplantation, the surgeon removes the islet cells from your pancreas. Many people have little knowledge of the vital roles the pancreas plays, or even where it is located in the body. A number of serious medical conditions can result when the pancreas is removed, but can you live without it?
Fortunately, it is possible. Your pancreas is located in the abdomen behind the stomach, between the liver and the beginning of the small intestine. It releases digestive juices containing enzymes into the small intestine after you eat. This helps break down the food so it can be converted to energy. The pancreas decreases blood sugar levels through its release of hormones such as insulin. When the pancreas does not make enough insulin to keep blood sugar in check, the result is diabetes.
Pancreatitis is the inflammation of the pancreas. Digestive enzymes are chemicals which break down the food we eat into smaller molecules. The stomach and small bowel send signals to the pancreas when these enzymes are needed.
As a result of the signal, the pancreas immediately releases stores of pre-manufactured enzymes into the bowel. Digestion then takes place in small bowel over next two-three hours. The enzymes are necessary to help us absorb nutrients to give the human body the materials it needs for energy, building muscle and normal working. There are specific enzymes to digest protein, fat, carbohydrates and other nutrients. If we did not have pancreass, all the food we eat would pass straight through. As a result, a person would have steatorrhea.
Steatorrhea is a specific type of loose motion or diarrhoea where particularly undigested food comes straight through. It can have a lot of fat in it, as there is no other part of digestive tract which produces fat breaking enzymes. Consequently, fat remains floating in toilet-pan, and is difficult to flush.
There are many causes of steatorrhea, and it needs to diagnosed and managed by a specialist doctor. Treatment is relatively straightforward, but should be taken under supervision of a specialist pancreas doctor.
The endocrine pancreas is very important too. It is called endocrine because it releases chemicals directly into blood stream. There are many functions of the endocrine pancreas, but the most commonly-known and understood is maintaining glucose levels. If the endocrine pancreas is not functioning well, then you can develop diabetes.
There are many types of diabetes, and treatment should take place under guidance of a diabetes specialist. Diabetes is the most common illness which affects the pancreas. Some types of diabetes are as a result of endocrine pancreas not working properly, whilst other types are due to problems in other parts of body and rarely due to medications used to treat other diseases.
Diabetes is treated by specialist diabetes doctors. The pancreas can also get inflamed due to irritation from a variety of agents. This is called pancreatitis. This is also fairly common. There are many types of pancreatitis depending on the causative agent and the duration of the problem. This is usually done through an endoscope a long, flexible tube while you are sedated. Often this is part of an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography ERCP. The doctor passes the endoscope down the throat and all the way into the small intestine.
Through the endoscope, the doctor can then put the stent into the bile duct. The stent can also be put in place through the skin during a percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography PTC. See Tests for Pancreatic Cancer. The stent helps keep the bile duct open even if the surrounding cancer presses on it.
But after several months, the stent may become clogged and may need to be cleared or replaced. Larger stents can also be used to keep parts of the small intestine open if they are in danger of being blocked by the cancer. A bile duct stent can also be put in to help relieve jaundice before curative surgery is done which would typically be a couple of weeks later.
This can help lower the risk of complications from surgery. In people who are healthy enough, another option for relieving a blocked bile duct is surgery to reroute the flow of bile from the common bile duct directly into the small intestine, bypassing the pancreas. This typically requires a large incision cut in the abdomen, and it can take weeks to recover from this. Sometimes surgery can be done through several small cuts in the abdomen using special long surgical tools.
This is known as laparoscopic or keyhole surgery. Having a stent placed is often easier and the recovery is much shorter, which is why this is done more often than bypass surgery.
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