""Dirty Dancing" star Patrick Swayze has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer — one of the most fatal forms of the disease — and is undergoing treatment, a representative for the actor said Wednesday in a written statement."

"Patrick has a very limited amount of disease and he appears to be responding well to treatment thus far. All of the reports stating the timeframe of his prognosis and his physical side effects are absolutely untrue. We are considerably more optimistic," Swayze’s physician, George Fisher, said in a statement."

"Caught in its advanced stages, pancreatic cancer, which strikes about 30,000 people a year, has a less than 5 percent survival rate for five years. If caught early and treated aggressively with surgery and chemotherapy — and if the cancer has not spread to lymph nodes — the five-year survival rate can go as high as 17 to 25 percent, said Avram Cooperman, surgical director for the Pancreas and Biliary Center at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335210,00.html