But conversely, pancreatic cancer that won't kill you is probably never caught because it is symptomless. Thus, you "survive" it and you don't even realize it. Improved pancreatic-cancer detection might well increase the amount of early pancreatic-cancers caught and the survival rate of pancreatic cancer without saving a single life!
>One of the major reasons breast cancer prognosis is so good is because it's often caught early.
I don't believe the statistics bear this out. In fact, there isn't a lot of evidence early detection of breast tumors does much to prolong life. If your metric is the number of years you live after the cancer is detected, then certainly early detection seems like a huge win. But that would be true even if you didn't do anything at all upon having detected the tumor.
You may have taken away the wrong message from the surgeon, or maybe I'm reading it wrong. One of the major reasons breast cancer prognosis is so good is because it's often caught early. Pancreatic cancer has no early symptoms, so by the time it's caught it's often too late.
Indeed one school of thought is that improved detection methods system-wide are going to be the #1 factor in winning against cancer long-term.