Typically, pancreatic cancer is treated with a combination of radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. The surgery is really the curative treatment, Fields explained, and can be done before or after chemotherapy and radiation.

“But regardless of when the radiation and chemotherapy are given, if the surgeon leaves behind any cancer, we know from both our data and national data that patients do as poorly as if they hadn’t had the surgery at all,” she said.

This small amount of cancer left behind after surgery is called the positive margin. It can be devastating for patients to go through such big procedures only to find out they have a positive margin because it was so difficult to find and remove all the cancer.

Fields said about 40 percent of Massey’s patients have positive margins after their surgeries. The survival rate of patients with positive margins is less than one year.

“We always scratch our heads and don’t know what to do about it, because after such a big surgery, it’s impossible to go back and target with more X-rays,” she said. “It’s impossible to know where that margin is; it’s impossible to spare the bowels and normal tissue in the area.”