Pancreatic cancer in the Australian population: identifying opportunities for intervention.

Pancreatic cancer is a disease associated with a poor overall survival. Advances in surgical techniques have helped improve outcomes of patients who are amenable to surgical resection. Sadly, surgery is amenable in only a small percentage of patients with the disease. Thus, there is a need to direct efforts at reducing the overall risk of pancreatic cancer or facilitating its early detection. The current review focused on collating all the literature published to date on pancreatic cancer in Australia with an aim to identify opportunities for intervention (at a state or national level) that are specific to Australia so as to help improve the outcome of patients with pancreatic cancer.