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therapeutic choices are possibly what made this happen.
First, let me clarify a few things about his disease:
Neuroendocrine tumors are far less deadly than "ordinary"
pancreatic cancer.
The big confusion in the media is that Jobs had pancreatic
cancer. Though his tumor might have originated in his pancreas,
we're not speaking of the dreaded pancreatic adenocarcinoma
that has such a horrible prognosis and makes up for
95% of pancreatic tumors.
Jobs is cited to have said himself that he had an islet-cell
tumor, which is a colloquially used, less accurate name for
the other 5% of pancreatic tumors, so-called neuroendocrine
tumors.
Neuroendocrine tumors are relatively mild forms of cancer.
Gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine Tumors (GePneT's)
are a range of tumors that mostly keep their original
function, producing endocrine hormones.
The disadvantage of that is the havoc they wreak on the
body due to all sorts of hormonal imbalances caused by the
hormones they produce. on the other hand, the level of differentiation
is a strong indicator of how aggressive a tumor is:
the better a tumor is differentiated e.g. keeps the features of
its originator, the least invasive and prone to metastasis it is.
Just to illustrate how mild these tumors can be:
• As many as 10% of autopsied persons in the general population
have been reported to have one of these without
ever having had any symptoms during their life.
• Up to 30% of detected GeP-neTs are so well-differentiated
they're strictly not cancers. I have even come across
an article where insulinomas, the most common type of
GeP-neTs were benign in 90% of the cases.
• If treated appropriately and in time, most people won't
die from the cancer itself. In my series of patients, for
many subtypes, the survival rate was as high as 100% over
a decade.
Neuroendocrine tumors caught in time can be treated just
by surgically removing the tumor.
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