Pancreatic cancer, the terrible disease that kneeled actor Patrick Swayze last year, has recently been diagnosed in another public figure of the United States. This time, it’s Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last month during a routine annual checkup carried out at the National Institute of Health’s Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

 

Despite statistics showing that pancreas cancer is generally a terminal disease, Justice Ginsburg plans to be back at work when the justices hear arguments on Feb. 23, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Friday, adding that she had no other information on Ginsburg’s condition.

 

Justice Ginsburg had surgery on Thursday to remove a 1-cm cancerous tumor located in her pancreas and is currently recuperating at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She will remain hospitalized for seven to 10 days, her surgeon Murray Brennan revealed.

 

Justice Ginsburg, 75, is not at her first battle with life. In 1999 she was diagnosed with colon cancer, a disease she managed to defeat. Her win “has inspired and given hope to many in the cancer fight. This new diagnosis is unfortunate, and we take hope in reports that this was apparently an early stage of disease, and wish her well, offer our support and prayers, and want to encourage her in what we know is going to be a challenging course of therapy,” Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said in a statement.

 

Whether her colon cancer and pancreatic cancer are linked, no one knows for sure. The connection between the two of them may have another explanation, according to Dr. Joshua Ellenhorn, chief of the division of general and oncologic surgery at the City of Hope National Medical Center. Justice Ginsburg may have a genetic abnormality, specific to some Ashkenazi Jews, which she is, that increases the risk of colon and pancreatic cancer.

 

Pancreatic cancer’s survival rates depend on the stage at which the malignancy was discovered. Usually, survivors live for five more years after diagnose if the disease is discovered in its early stage, which is Justice Ginsburg’s case as well. At this point however no one could tell for sure what her chances are. She will most likely receive radiation or chemotherapy following the surgery, but no one can guarantee that they will work.  Both therapies “can improve the long-term outcome but, at most, minimally,” said Dr. Joshua Ellenhorn.

 

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in the United States after lung, colon and breast cancer, according to estimates of the American Cancer Society. There were 38,000 cases of pancreas cancer diagnosed last year, 36,000 of which ended tragically.