Pancreatic cancer

What and where the pancreas is

The pancreas is part of the digestive system.

The pancreas is quite high up in your abdomen. It lies across your body where your ribs meet at the bottom of your breastbone, just behind your stomach. It is about 6 inches (15 centimetres) long and shaped like a leaf. The wide end of the pancreas is called the head. The thin end is called the tail. The bit in the middle is called the body.

Common Types Of Cancer

Cancer incidence and mortality statistics reported by the American Cancer Society¹ and other resources were used to create the list. To qualify as a common cancer for the list, the estimated annual incidence for 2014 had to be 40,000 cases or more.

The most common type of cancer on the list is breast cancer, with about 235,000 new cases expected in the United States in 2014. The next most common cancers are prostate cancer and lung cancer. 

Because colon and rectal cancers are often referred to as "colorectal cancers," these two cancer types are combined for the list. For 2014, the estimated number of new cases of colon cancer and rectal cancer are 96,830 and 40,000, respectively, adding to a total of 136,830 new cases of colorectal cancer.

The following table gives the estimated numbers of new cases and deaths for each common cancer type: