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Updated: Aug 27, 2025
Establishment and Characterization of Small Bowel Neuroendocrine Tumor Spheroids
Published on: October 14, 2019
Characteristics and outcome of patients with small bowel adenocarcinoma (SBA)
Andreas Teufel1,2, Nadja M Meindl-Beinker3, Pauline Hösel4
1Division of Hepatology, Division of Clinical Bioinformatics, Department of Medicine II, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Theodor-Kutzer-Ufer 1-3, 68167, Mannheim, Germany. andreas.teufel@medma.uni-heidelberg.de.
Background:
Small bowel adenocarcinoma (SBA) remains a rare malignancy accounting for less than 5% of all the gastrointestinal tract cancers. However, only limited data and expert guidelines are available for this entity. As a result, treatment concepts are predominantly derived from colorectal cancer.
Methods:
To substantiate data on the course of disease, diagnosis and treatment of SBA, we performed a population-based analysis from a Bavarian population of 2.2 million people.
Results:
We identified 223 patients with SBA. Mean age at diagnosis was 67.8 years and patients were diagnosed rather late (34.5% UICC stage IV). Largest proportion of these patients were diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the duodenum (132 patients, 59.2%) and most patients were diagnosed with late stage cancer, stage IV (70 patients, 31.4%). With respect to treatment, most patients underwent primary surgery (187 patients, 84.6%). Systemic therapy seemed to have an impact in UICC stage IV patients but not in UICC stage IIB or III. The 5-year survival rate was 29.0%. This was significantly less compared to colon cancer in the same cohort, which was 50.0%. Furthermore, median survival of patients with small bowel cancer was only 2.0 years (95% CI 1.4-2.5) compared to 4.9 years (95% CI 4.8-5.1) of patients with colon cancer.
Conclusion:
SBA showed a distinct epidemiology compared to colon cancer. Thus, data acquisition particularly on systemic treatment are paramount, with the objective to complement the available guidelines.
