A tool to predict survival in stage IV entero-pancreatic NEN

Well-differentiated stage IV neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN) have an extremely heterogeneous, unpredictable clinical behavior. Survival prognostic markers, such as the recently proposed NEP-Score, would be very useful for better defining therapeutic strategies. We aim to verify NEP-Score applicability in an independent cohort of stage IV well-differentiated (WD) gastroentero-pancreatic (GEP) NEN, and identify a derivate prognostic marker taking into account clinical and pathological characteristics at diagnosis.

Age, site of primary tumor, primary tumor surgery, symptoms, Ki67, timing of metastases of 27 patients (10 females; mean age at diagnosis 60.2 ± 2.9 years) with stage IV WD GEP NEN were evaluated to calculate the NEP-Score at the end of follow-up (NEP-T). We calculated the NEP-Score at diagnosis (NEP-D), which does not consider the appearance of new metastases during follow-up. Patients were subdivided according to whether they were alive or not at the end of follow-up (EOF) and an NEP-Score threshold was investigated to predict survival.

Mean NEP-T and mean NEP-D were significantly lower in 15 live patients as compared to 12 deceased patients (p < 0.01) at EOF. We identified an NEP-D = 116 as the cutoff that significantly predicts survival. No gender differences were identified.

In our series, we confirmed NEP-Score applicability. In addition, we propose NEP-D as a simple, quick and cheap prognostic score that can help clinicians in decision making. NEP-D threshold can predict NEN aggressiveness and may be used to define the best personalized therapeutic strategy.