Nonfunctioning Islet Cell Tumors of the Pancreas

Jang, Hyuk Jai; Kim, Song Cheol; Lee, Sung Gyu; Han, Duck Jong

Abstract

Backgrond/Aims: Nonfunctioning islet tumor is a neuroendocrine neoplasm that is not associated with any clinical syndrome manifesting hormonal hyperfunction, and should be considered differently from functioning islet tumor in terms of diagnosis and therapy. We analyzed the clinical charac teristics of the tumor.
METHODS
We retrospectively analyzed 8 patients who were diagnosed as nonfunctioning islet tumors between 1990 and 1997.
RESULTS
The patients included 4 men and 4 women and their mean age was 48 years. The clinical manifestations were abdominal pain (6 cases) mass (3 cases) and jaundice (2 cases). Its preoperative diagnosis was possible in 2 cases only by fine needle aspiration. The tumors were located at the head in 5 patents, at the body in 1 patient and a multiple sites in 2 patients. Pancreaticoduodenectomy was performed for 6 patients including pylorus-preserving procedure (2 cases), regional pancreatectomy (1 patient) distal pancreatectomy (1 patient) and regional total pacreatectomy (1 patient). The mean size of the tumor was 4.6 cm. The incidence of malignancy was 62.5%. All the patients are alive during the follow-up period
CONCLUSIONS
Although nonfunctioning islet tumor is a slow-growing and low grade malignancy, vigorous attempt to resect the lesion should be carried out for the improvement of long-term survival.