RESUMEN
A total of 97 patients with pancreatic carcinoma were examined with sonography, computed tomography of the pancreas and endoscopy of the stomach and duodenum. The tumor involved mainly the head of the pancreas in 69 (71.1%), the body in 21 (21.7%) and the tail in 7 (7.2%) patients. Two basic types of the disease were identified: disseminated in 83 patients and rare in 14 patients. The disseminated type included a central (45 patients) and a peripheral (38 patients) variant. The latter is classed as peripheral (n = 30) and paraduodenal (n = 8). The rare types included masked variants (n = 6), miniblastomas (n = 3), megablastomas (n = 2) of the pancreas, as well as thrombotic variants of the disease (n = 3). The highest diagnostic value of sonography and computed tomography was observed in intrinsic peripheral variants of carcinoma. Gastroduodenal endoscopy along with biopsy of suspected segments is highly diagnostic in paraduodenal variants of the disease.