Dr. Gordon Hixson is proud to say he is part of the 5 percent – the 5 percent of people who survive pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Gordon Hixson displays the process of performing a pancreatic cancer screening on a patient. According to Hixson, the screening can take as little as six to seven minutes, and patients will have information about the screening the day it is performed.A doctor of radiology for more than 40 years, Hixson detected his cancer in its earliest stages through an ultrasound screening process he performed on himself. Convinced the screening process saved his life, he now offers pancreatic cancer screenings at Women’s Diagnostic Center on Vance Road in an effort to help others survive the fourth most fatal cancer.
“As happy as I am with some of my other contributions to the medical community, this could be the biggest thing I’ve ever done,” said Hixson, whose other inventions have made major strides in breast cancer imaging.
According to him, the ultrasound he performed showed a dilated pancreatic duct, which is where 99 percent of all pancreatic cancers originate. After detecting the dilation, Hixson said doctors performed a variety of other tests to determine whether he had cancer.
“It was the smallest cancer the doctor had ever seen,” he said.