Active clinical trials for "Pancreatic Neoplasms"

The purpose of this study is to determine whether early recurrence after curative resection of ductal pancreatic adenocarcinoma can be explained by either dissemination of cancer cells during intraoperative tumour manipulation, post-operative systemic immune suppression, alteration of biological properties of circulating cancer cells or a combination of these.

RATIONALE: Gathering information about patients with cancer may help doctors learn more about the disease and plan early diagnosis and treatment. PURPOSE: This clinical trial is studying computer tools for improving early diagnosis and treatment in patients with pancreatic cancer, are at risk for pancreatic cancer, or have a non-cancerous pancreatic disorder.

Cancer is a well known risk factor for venous thromboembolism (VTE) such as deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE). Today we know that patients with adenocarcinomas of the gastro intestinal tract (GI-tract) often is in a hypercoagulable state. In our observational study we collect patients admitted to department with a tentative diagnosis of upper GI cancer including pancreas cancer and offer them flow doppler ultrasounds of both legs for diagnosis of DVT in the entire treatment time. The routine CT-scan of the chest is modified to diagnose PE. This will be compared with blood samples analysed for coagulation markers including D-dimer - a fibrinogen degradation product.

RATIONALE: Studying samples of blood in the laboratory from patients with cancer and from healthy participants may help doctors identify and learn more about proteins related to cancer. It may also help doctors tell whether a patient has cancer. PURPOSE: This clinical trial is looking at proteins in blood samples to see how well they work in finding pancreatic cancer and extrahepatic biliary tract cancer.

The purpose of this project is to evaluate and compare three new methods for diagnosis, staging, operability evaluation and treatment control of pancreas cancer. The investigators use contrast-enhanced ultrasound combined with the gastrointestinal hormones Secretin and Cholecystokinin, which triggers the enzyme production of pancreas. The hormones induce an increased metabolism and thus an increased blood flow through healthy pancreas tissue, however, not in tumor tissue. The investigators hope to be able to use this effect diagnostically. The patients included will also have a 64-slice-CT in order to evaluate, if an increased diagnostic safety can be reached compared to an older CT scanning method. All patients will also be examined for the tumor marker CA 19-9. Further, the investigators will examine if contrast-enhanced ultrasound can contribute with information in treatment control after either surgery or medical treatment.

The primary aim of REuBio study is to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of repeated endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle biopsy after a previous non-diagnostic or inconclusive EUS-guided sampling of solid pancreatic lesions.

The study protocol is based on a multi-center semi-quantitative approach of EUS elastography data in combination with contrast-enhanced EUS, consisting of measuring SR and SH for focal pancreatic masses and lymph nodes, as well as several parameters of CE-EUS based on time-intensity-curve (TIC) analysis. A number of parameters must be taken into consideration, as the ROIs are still manually selected by the user. The aim of the study is to establish an EUS based diagnostic algorithm in patients with pancreatic masses and lymph nodes, with negative or inconclusive cytopathology after EUS-FNA, based on previously published results and cut-offs of elastography and contrast-enhancement. The proposed algorithm of sequential use of real-time elastography, followed by contrast-enhanced EUS could be a good clinical tool to help select the patients with possible pancreatic adenocarcinoma or malignant lymph nodes, in the setting of patients with negative EUS-FNA results.

Pancreatic cancer has a high mortality rate. Patients with an intended curative resection show a median survival of 17-23 months. Therefore, quality of life is very important in this patient group. In this study, the effect of pancreatic surgery on quality of life is measured.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of using ultrasound to image and track pancreas/duodenum motion during radiation therapy treatment delivery. Also develop a workflow and process to allow the final ultrasound system to be used routinely by radiation therapists.

Pancreatic cancer is among the most serious human neoplasia and the most difficult to treat. Most patients present at diagnosis a non resectable, locally advanced or metastatic disease, with a median survival of 12 month. The aim of this study is the identification of diagnosis biomarkers, predictive of the therapeutic response. This project investigate the use of molecular analyses applied to pancreatic tumor cells collected by microbiopsy under ultrasound-endoscopy, and blood cells.