18. Pancreatic carcinoma

Organ: Liver, pancreas

Description:

In the upper left corner is there some healthy liver. The rest of the preparation is a large greyish mass which has directly infiltrated the liver. It’s impossible to distinguish what the origin of the tumor is.

Diagnosis: Pancreatic cancer with direct infiltration of liver

Causes of pancreatic cancer:

Smoking
Chronic pancreatitis
Alcoholism
Obesity

Theory:

This preparation is tricky. Just by looking at this is it impossible to identify the origin of the tumor as a pancreatic tumor – it could also have originated as an extrahepatic cholangiocellular carcinoma for example. We know that the tumor is pancreatic in origin from before the preparation was made.

It’s important to note that the infiltration of the liver is not a metastasis. Metastases and invasion are two different things.