Nonfunctioning neuroendocrine pancreatic tumors: our experience and management

We present our experience in the treatment of nonfunctioning neuroendocrine pancreatic tumors (NFNPTs) to define the clinical and pathological characteristics and to suggest proper management.

The records of 17 patients with NFNPTs operated on between 1998 and 2008 were retrospectively reviewed, and all tumors were classified clinicopathologically as benign, uncertain, and malignant, based on the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of neuroendocrine tumors.

There were four benign, six uncertain, and seven malignant NFNPTs. The most frequent symptoms were abdominal pain (five patients) and obstructive jaundice (one patient). Most of these symptomatic patients had malignant tumors. Mean tumor size of benign, uncertain, and malignant tumors were 1.0 +/- 0.3, 3.2 +/- 1.6, and 5.3 +/- 2.4 cm, respectively. Metastatic lesions of malignant tumors were lymph node (six patients), liver (four patients), and adrenal gland (one patient). Six of seven patients with malignant tumors underwent curative rejection. There were recurrences in four of six patients with curatively rejected malignant tumors. Two patients underwent more rejection, three patients received systemic chemotherapy, and two patients underwent radiofrequency ablation and transcatheter arterial chemoembolization for liver metastases. Survival of patients with malignant tumors was significantly shorter than that of patients with benign and uncertain tumors. However, three patients with malignant tumors had long survival of more than 3 years, even with metastases or recurrences.

Aggressive surgical resection should be performed in patients with resectable NFNPTs, even with metastases. Even when a tumor was unresectable or there were recurrences, long-time palliation could be achieved by a multidisciplinary approach.