Abstract
Pancreatic cancer is a devasting disease which is an increasing cause of cancer mortality. The aim of this study was to characterise, using descriptive statistics, the sociodemographic, risk and clinical characteristics of who develops pancreatic cancer. This retrospective cohort study examined data from one of the largest UK primary care databases, from January 1st 2006 to August 31st 2020. A total of 573 primary care practices contributed data. There were 9,267 people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The median age at diagnosis was 73 years (IQR 16) and 49.8% (4,616) of people were female. Nearly a third (30.2%, 2,798) of people had diabetes, and 85.8% (2,400) of the people with diabetes received the diabetes diagnosis before pancreatic cancer. For people for whom ethnicity was recorded 94.4% (5,979) were white. Under half of people with BMI recorded (41.9%, 571) were overweight or obese at pancreatic cancer diagnosis and 5.9% (80) were underweight. In addition, 12.6% (1,168) of participants were active smokers and 1.4% (130) exceeded recommended limits of alcohol. Improved characterisation of the sociodemographic, risk and clinical characteristics of who develops pancreatic cancer highlights the opportunity for machine learning and other technologies to flag people at high risk of this cancer.