Pancreatic adenocarcinoma presenting as a splenic abscess: case report and diagnostic approach

As the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States, pancreatic adenocarcinoma is both a diagnostic and a therapeutic challenge. Its incidence has risen in the past four decades so that pancreatic cancer ranks second to colon cancer as a leading cause of death from gastrointestinal malignancy. Despite technical and therapeutic advances, the prognosis remains dismal; the average survival time after diagnosis is characteristically only five to eight months. The current patient had a pancreatic adenocarcinoma that mimicked other disorders. Variability in clinical presentation and imaging studies warrants consideration of this entity in the differential diagnoses of many splenic and pancreatic lesions.