

Why has Sakura Yamauchi never had a pancreas transplant in the "I Want to Eat
Your Pancreas" anime? Why didn't doctors suggest this?


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2020-03-12T12:22:35.547
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2020-08-02T16:24:12.760
2020-03-12T12:42:42.477
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question
i-want-to-eat-your-pancreas
Why has Sakura Yamauchi never had a pancreas transplant?


I haven't seen the animated film but I assume her condition is the same as the
manga which is Pancreatic cancer, it's mentioned on page 20 of chapter 1 on
the first page of her "Infirmity Novel" (a journal she's keeping about the
progression of her disease). As @paulnamida mentions in a comment and a bit of
Googling around a pancreas transplant is occasionally done for people with
Type 1 Diabetes but not for Pancreatic cancer. Usually Pancreatic cancer is
discovered too late to be treated as it is more difficult than most cancers to
detect in its early stages due to its symptoms being mistaken with those of
other illnesses more common than cancer. By the time it is detected it has
often already started to spread to other parts of the body which makes a
transplant of just the pancreas futile. If the cancer had been caught early
enough (which the story seems to imply it wasn't) and has yet to spread to
other parts of the body then it can be treated by surgically removing part of
the pancreas via [Whipple
Surgery](https://www.seenamagowitzfoundation.org/whipple-operation/) which
would not require a transplant to be done anyway.

[![pancreas](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dqNxF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dqNxF.png)


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2020-03-13T06:18:52.410
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answer