Abstract:
A retrospective study of autopsies has been
carried out and this shows the death rate from
pancreatic carcinoma to be 5.8% of all cancer
deaths in the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital
Mortuary between the period 1972-1981.
This relatively high incidence would lend
support to findings of other studies which
indicate that the disease is more common in US
blacks and some parts of Africa. The high case
fatality rate as found in our hospital-based
cancer registry coupled with the increasing
trend in females in recent years indicate that
the disease requires a closer study from the
point of view of aetiology and natural history
in Ghana. The greater preference to the head
of the pancreas would obviously pose problems
to effective management