Carcinoma of the pancreas: A review of autopsy material at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for the period 1972-1981.

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