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Updated: May 12, 2026

Robotic Enucleation of an Intra-Pancreatic Insulinoma in the Pancreatic Head
Published on: January 3, 2020
Pancreatic insulinoma combined with glucagon positive cell: A case report
Suguru Yamashita1, Nobutaka Tanaka, Michiro Takahashi
1Suguru Yamashita, Nobutaka Tanaka, Michiro Takahashi, Motoki Nagai, Takatoshi Furuya, Yukihiro Nomura, Department of Surgery, Asahi General Hospital, Chiba 289-2511, Japan.
Abstract:
We present a 70-year-old man who was referred for surgery with uncontrollable hypoglycemia. Ultrasonography and abdominal contrast computed tomography revealed a hypervascular tumor of 1 cm in diameter in the pancreatic tail. With a diagnosis of insulinoma, we performed a distal pancreatectomy. The patient showed a good postoperative course without any complications. The patient's early morning fasting hypoglycemia disappeared. The respective levels of C-peptide and insulin dropped from 14.9 ng/mL and 4860 μIU/mL preoperatively to 5.3 ng/mL and 553 μIU/mL after surgery. A histopathological examination demonstrated that the tumor was a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, grade 1. Immunostaining was negative for insulin and positive for CD56, chromogranin A, synaptophysin and glucagon. These findings suggested that the tumor was clinically an insulinoma but histopathologically a glucagonoma. Among all insulinoma cases reported between 1985 and 2010, only 5 cases were associated with independent glucagonoma. In this report, we characterize and discuss this rare type of insulinoma by describing the case we experienced in detail.
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