[Small bowel tumors. Clinical course and therapeutic aspects]

The small bowel tumors are rare and their diagnosis is difficult. Therefore, they are usually discovered in advanced stages and often a surgical intervention is imposed due to acute complications generated by the tumors. Sometimes, they are accidentally found during other surgical procedures. We present 25 cases of small bowel tumors treated between 1996-2005. Among these cases, 4 (16%) were located in the duodenum, 10 (40%) in the jejunum and 10 (40%) in the ileum. In one case, there were multiple tumor locations spread along the mesenterial bowel and mesentery. Recently, pre- operative diagnosis has become more accurate due to modem imaging modalities, such as computed tomography, which has established the diagnosis in 12 cases. From the therapeutical perspective, the surgical intervention (spread segmentary resections/enterostomies) is the only method which improves survival rate. In our study, this approach was possible in 15 patients (60%). It was noticed that the tumor recurrences are frequent and occur early. Post-operative morbidity (12 cases--48%) and mortality (3 cases--12%) rates remain rather high.