By David Liu

Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs' biographer was cited by telegraph.co.uk as saying that Mr. Jobs, the former Apple chief executive regretted that he did not undergo surgery and chemotherapy sooner.

Mr. Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and he did not receive surgery and chemotherapy right after his diagnosis.  Instead, he opted to receive alternative treatments for some months, news media reported.   From the tune of the media reports, Mr. Jobs believed he could live longer if he followed his doctors' advice to receive the conventional treatments immediately after diagnosis.

Could he really live longer? No one knows in his case.

Pancreatic cancer is highly lethal.  The American Cancer Society, according to pancreatic.org, states that for all pancreatic cancers combined, the one year-survival rate is 20 percent and the five year survival rate is only 4 percent.   The low survival rate is attributed to the fact that in most cases, surgery is not possible because the disease may have already spread to other locations at the time of diagnosis.

But even in those cases where surgery is possible, which means that the disease is still in early stages and does not necessarily mean that surgery alone indeed helps a whole lot to reduce the risk, the average survival rate is only about one and half a year. In these cases, the five year survival rate is merely 10 percent.

Steve Jobs lived about 8 years after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Although he believed he might live longer if he did surgery earlier, it is already a miracle to many readers that Mr. Jobs lived so long even with initial alternative treatments.

Although Steve Jobs wished he could live longer, no one can be so sure that he would live longer if he opted to receive surgery and chemotherapy immediately after his diagnosis.

The point is, just because Mr. Jobs regretted that he did not receive the conventional treatments as quickly as recommended, it does not mean he could live longer.