Patrick Swayze Battling Cancer

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

The statement followed a report earlier in the day by the National Enquirer that said Swayze, 55, had five weeks to live because doctors in late January had diagnosed pancreatic cancer that had spread to other organs.

Swayze’s rep issued a statement Wednesday after the report began circulating, claiming the star is continuing his normal work schedule, and Swayze’s doctor said the reports of Swayze's imminent death are unfounded.

“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 Dr. George A. Fisher said in a statement. Fisher is an associate professor teaching at Stanford University Cancer Center and is involved in many experimental cancer treatments.

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 Dr. Avram Cooperman, surgical director for the Pancreas and Biliary Center at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan.

It was not known whether Swayze had undergone surgery to remove the cancer or if any surgery was planned.

Swayze's mother told E! News she knows her son is sick.

"I don't really want to talk about it, but I know he's sick," Patsy Swayze said. "But he has great doctors and a great prognosis, and that's all I can say."

For the past month, Swayze, has been traveling to Stanford University Cancer Center in Palo Alto for radical chemotherapy, the Enquirer reported, which also quoted sources as saying he had received three doses of chemotherapy. The tumor shrank, but less than his doctors had hoped for, the Enquirer reported.

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