Metastatic Tumors to the Pancreas, a Single Center Study

Most pancreatic masses are primary ductal adenocarcinomas; however, with the advent of new imaging studies and increasing survival of cancer patients, there are more cases with the diagnosis of secondary metastatic cancer to the pancreas. There is no study regarding cancer metastases to the pancreas from Iran. In this study, we retrieved all of the cases with the diagnosis of secondary cancer of pancreas in the affiliated hospitals of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.

In 5 years (2012-2017), we evaluated all cases with the diagnosis of any pancreatic tumors and extracted all of the demographic and clinicopathologic findings of the cases with the diagnosis of metastatic pancreatic tumors from the clinical charts and pathology reports.

For the duration of 5 years in our center, there were 131 cases of pancreatic tumors with different diagnoses, 9 of which were diagnosed as metastatic cancers from other organs. Two cases were diagnosed with gastric adenocarcinoma, 2 cases were colonic adenocarcinoma, one case was lung small cell carcinoma, 2 cases were renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and one case was gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST). The mesenchymal metastatic cancer to the pancreas has been a case of pleomorphic sarcoma of retroperitoneum.

Pancreas is not a common location for metastases; however, colon, stomach, kidney and lung seem to be the most common primary tumors with metastases to the pancreas. Our report is the first study about pancreatic metastatic tumors from Iran.