Surgery of cystic neoplasms

Neoplastic cysts of the pancreas have been recognized since the nineteenth century, and although differences between neoplastic and proliferative cysts were acknowledged, they were treated similarly, first by marsupialization and later by internal drainage. Increased awareness of the malignant potential of neoplastic cysts, as well as advances in surgical techniques, made excision the preferred treatment for these lesions as early as the 1940s, but errors in diagnosis were frequent, and even to this date, continue to account for cases of pancreatic cystic tumors treated by drainage.