Detection and clinical application of circulating tumor cells in pancreatic neoplasm

Pancreatic neoplasm is one of the most commonly appeared digestive tumors and has been well recognized as the poor diseases which have the difficulties in diagnosis, treatment and prognosis estimation. Recently, the detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has been a pretty highlight of the  research  on detecting tumor cells in peripheral blood, and  furthermore, the clinical value in the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis prediction has already been verified through a large amount of samples analyses in various kinds of tumor diseases. This paper aims to review and conclude the techniques of CTCs enrichment, detection and clinical implications in pancreatic neoplasms. In addition, the existing papers have been summarized and prospect of application of CTCs is also presented.