[Pancreatic endocrine tumors: clinical manifestations and predictive factors associated with survival]

Since pancreatic endocrine tumors (PET) are rare and heterogeneous diseases, their survival and prognosis are not well known. Due to recent advances in CT/MRI technology, incidentalomas of the pancreas are detected with increasing frequency. This study presents results of clinical manifestations of PET and predictive factors associated with survival.

From year 1990 through 2006, medical records of 98 patients (56 men, 42 women) who were diagnosed as PET pathologically at Seoul National University Hospital were reviewed retrospectively.

Ages ranged from 17 to 76 years (mean 51.6+/-1.3 years) with a mean follow-up of 3.6+/-0.4 years (range 0-10.1 years). Overall 5-year survival rate was 68.1%, and 5-year survival rate of the patients who had distant metastases at initial diagnosis was 43.9%. Functioning tumors [hazard ratio (HR) 0.229, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.056-0.943, p=0.041] and lymph node or liver metastases (HR 5.537, 95% CI 2.106-14.555, p<0.001) were the significant prognostic factors associated with survival rate. However, tumor size and pathology showed no significant association with survival.

Because small and pathologically benign nature do not predict good prognosis in PET, aggressive treatment such as curative resection would be considered initially even in the case of incidental PET.