A team at London's Royal Free Hospital used the new technique, pioneered in the US, in December, it has emerged.

It involved cutting away the tumour along with the portal vein - a major vessel in the pancreas - and replacing it with the jugular vein from the neck.

The female patient is now recovering well and experts believe the surgery could help up to 700 people a year.

This technique is exciting as it enables us to offer a whole new group of patients the opportunity for surgery Kito Fusai, surgeon

There is currently no treatment for pancreatic cancer that is so advanced, with most patients given just six months to live.

The surgery also removes the portal vein because pancreatic cancer often invades that part of the pancreas as it advances.

Those diagnosed in the earlier stages can sometimes be treated with chemotherapy or surgery, but of the 7,400 people who get it each year just 3% are alive five years later.

The development comes after it was announced film star Patrick Swayze is battling the disease.

Exciting

Surgeon Kito Fusai, who performed the first procedure with his colleague Dinesh Sharma, said the technique was exciting.

"If discovered early, before it has spread to other major organs such as the liver or lungs, the cancer may be treatable.

"However, currently only a small proportion of patients - around 10% - are suitable for surgery.

"The only treatment for the vast majority of patients is chemotherapy or palliative treatment.

"This technique is exciting as it enables us to offer a whole new group of patients the opportunity for surgery.

"We expect it will double the number of patients each year - potentially saving many hundreds more lives."

And he added: "Without this surgery the patient would undoubtedly have died, probably within six months or a year's time."

The breakthrough in the UK comes after successful operations were carried out in the US.

A team at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas, operated on 55 patients three years ago, with recent data showing encouraging survival rates.

Maggie Blanks, of the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, said: "When tumours are close to the portal vein it precludes surgery so anything that overcomes that is a major step.

"But it is very early stages and this does not sound like it would necessarily help when the cancer has spread beyond the pancreas."