In 2009, Steve Jobs underwent a liver transplant due to the...

By SHARON BEGLEY

Published: Oct 5, 2011

     Steve Jobs was right to be optimistic when, in 2004, he announced that he had cancer in his pancreas. Although cancer of the pancreas has a terrible prognosis—half of all patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer die within 10 months of the diagnosis; half of those in whom it has metastasized die within six months—cancer in the pancreas is not necessarily a death sentence. 

     The difference is that pancreatic cancers arise from the pancreatic cells themselves; this is the kind that killed actor Patrick Swayze in 2009. But cancers in the pancreas, called neuroendocrine tumors, arise from islands of hormone-producing cells that happen to be in that organ. Jobs learned in 2003 that he had an extremely rare form of this cancer, an islet-cell neuroendocrine tumor. As the name implies, it arises from islet cells, the specialized factories within the pancreas that produce and secrete insulin, which cells need in order to take in glucose from the food we eat. Unlike pancreatic cancer, with neuroendocrine cancer ''if you catch it early, there is a real potential for cure,'' says cancer surgeon Joseph Kim of City of Hope, a comprehensive cancer center in Duarte, California.

     But although neither Apple nor those close to Jobs were willing to discuss the treatments he elected or the course of his disease, interviews with experts on neuroendocrine tumors suggest that some of the choices he made did not extend his life and may have shortened it. [...] Despite the expert consensus on the value of surgery, Jobs did not elect it right away. He reportedly spent nine months on ―alternative therapies,‖ including what Fortune called ―a special diet.‖ But when a scan showed that the original tumor had grown, he finally had it removed on July 31, 2004, at Stanford University Medical Clinic. In emails to Apple employees immediately after, Jobs said his form of cancer ―can be cured by surgical removal if diagnosed in time (mine was),'' and told his colleagues, ―I will be recuperating during the month of August, and expect to return to work in September.'' 

(Disponível em: <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-dies-his-unorthodox-treatment-for-neuroendocrine-cancer.html?obref=obinsite>. Acesso em: 5 out. 2011).