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Diabetes After Pancreatic Cancer

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Last Modified: May 8, 2012

Question

If I have pancreatic cancer, will I have diabetes?

Answer

Ursina Teitelbaum, MD, Medical Oncologist at Penn Medicine responds:

Some patients develop diabetes after pancreatic surgeries but usually only if they have had a total pancreatectomy. There are a certain population of patients that might be predisposed, that do develop diabetes but it is not an absolute. There are many patients that have large pancreatic primaries that never develop diabetes so there is no absolute rule.

It is also interesting to note that there are a certain number of patients that developed pancreatic cancer in the year prior to their diagnosis.

This question and answer was part of the OncoLink Brown Bag Chat Series. View the entire transcript from the Focus on Pancreatic Cancer Webchat.