Steve Jobs undergoes successful treatment for cancer

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has undergone successful surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer, the company's co-founder told employees in a company-wide e-mail on Sunday, according to Reuters. "Jobs, 49, wrote in the e-mail sent from his hospital bed that he plans to return to work in September after recuperating in August. In his absence, Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations, will run Apple, while Ed Catmull, Pixar's president and who already runs the company's day-to-day operations, will oversee Pixar.

"This weekend I underwent a successful surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from my pancreas," Jobs wrote in the e-mail. "I had a very rare form of pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which represents about 1 percent of the total cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed each year, and can be cured by surgical removal if diagnosed in time (mine was)."...He added that he "will not require any chemotherapy or radiation treatments."



"Bill Campbell, an Apple board member and also chairman and former chief executive of financial software company Intuit, said in a telephone interview that based on his conversations with them, 'The doctors felt very confident that the surgery was successful and (Jobs') prognosis is excellent.'



Reuters reports that Jobs said in his email that he did not have the far more common kind of pancreatic cancer--called adenocarcinoma, it is currently not curable and usually carries a life expectancy of around one year after diagnosis.



"'I mention this because when one hears 'pancreatic cancer' (or Googles it), one immediately encounters this far more common and deadly form, which, thank God, is not what I had,' Jobs wrote."

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