Guidance
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing pancreatic cancer in adults aged 18 and over. It aims to improve care by ensuring quicker and more accurate diagnosis, and by specifying the most effective treatments for people depending on how advanced their cancer is.
For recommendations on identifying pancreatic cancer in primary care, or when to refer people to a specialist, see the NICE guideline on recognition and referral for suspected cancer.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- diagnosis
- monitoring for people with an inherited high risk of pancreatic cancer
- staging
- psychological support
- pain and nutrition management
- management for resectable, borderline resectable and unresectable cancer
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- Adults aged 18 and over with pancreatic cancer, their families and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline updates and replaces NICE technology appraisal guidance 25 (published May 2001).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.