Introduction
The prognosis for patients with pancreatic cancer could be improved if
clinicians were able to detect and treat the disease in its early stages
(1,2). Using a recent analysis of the Japan Pancreatic Cancer Registry,
the Japan Pancreas Society reports that the 5-year survival rate in
patients with lesions less than 10 mm in diameter is 80.4%, and that it
is 85.8% in patients with stage 0 pancreatic cancer, comprising
high-grade pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN-3) and pancreatic
carcinoma in situ (PCIS) (3). However, only 0.6% of patients with
pancreatic cancer are diagnosed at stage 0 because of the difficulty of
detecting cancer at this early stage (4). We describe herein a patient
with PCIS synchronous with early gastric cancer, detected preoperatively
using serial pancreatic juice aspiration cytological examination
(SPACE).