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Karen,
Val,is right in stating that metastatic pancreas tumors from breast are rare.
I found an 2003 article which estimates their frequency at about 3% & it speculates that because these tumors are slow growing & symptomless for a long time,that their frequency may rise as patients are survaving longer with better treatments for the primary breast cancer. The first symptom appears to be osbtructive jaundice.
In one case report a proposed test of the primary tumor to confirm whether or not the pancreas tumor is secondary to breast is described as follows:
<!-- null -->Immunohistochemical staining was performed<SUP> </SUP>to confirm whether the pancreatic tumor was primary or secondary.<SUP> </SUP>Human milk fat globules 1 and 2 and gross cystic disease fluid<SUP> </SUP>protein-15, which characteristically exist in normal breast<SUP> </SUP>tissue or breast carcinoma, were expressed both in the primary<SUP> </SUP>breast tumor and the pancreatic tumor. In contrast, both the<SUP> </SUP>anti-estrogen receptor and anti-progesterone receptor antibodies<SUP> </SUP>stained positively in the primary breast cancer; however, neither<SUP> </SUP>of them was positive in the metastatic pancreatic tumor. We<SUP> </SUP>report a rare case of a patient who presented with obstructive<SUP> </SUP>jaundice from a pancreatic tumor metastasizing from breast cancer<SUP> </SUP>and in whom immunohistochemical staining using the antibodies<SUP> </SUP>unique to the mammary gland was effective for the diagnosis<SUP> </SUP>of this secondary tumor.
An other research paper reports a small percentage of pancreatic cancer cases showing HER-2 involvment. This may mean that Herceptin alone may not work in the majority of cases.
Because metastatic pancreas is so rare I wonder if a PET/CT scan would not be indicated to confirm a possible false positive of the CT scan.
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