ENETS Consensus Guidelines for the Management of Patients with Digestive Neuroendocrine Neoplasms: Functional Pancreatic Endocrine Tumor Syndromes

Abstract

Pancreatic endocrine tumors (p-NETs) include both pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (p-NETs) associated with a functional syndrome (functional p-NETs) or those associated with no distinct clinical syndrome (non-functional p-NETs) [1,2,3,4]. Non-functional p-NETs frequently secrete pancreatic polypeptide, chromogranin A, neuron-specific enolase, human chorionic gonadotrophin subunits, calcitonin, neurotensin or other peptides, but they do not usually produce specific symptoms and thus are considered clinically to be non-functional tumors [2,3,5,6,7]. Only the functional p-NETs will be considered in this section. The two most common functional p-NETs (gastrinomas, insulinomas) are considered separately, whereas the other well-described and possible rare functional p-NETs are considered together as a group called rare functional p-NETs (RFTs) (table ​(table1)1) [1,2,3,4]. Table 1 Functional pancreatic endocrine tumor (PET) syndromes Gastrinomas are neuroendocrine neoplasms, usually located in the duodenum or pancreas, that secrete gastrin and cause a clinical syndrome known as Zollinger-Ellison syndrome (ZES). ZES is characterized by gastric acid hypersecretion resulting in severe peptic disease (peptic ulcer disease (PUD), gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)) [8,9,10]. In this section, ZES due to both duodenal and pancreatic gastrinomas will be covered together because clinically they are similar [8,10]. Specific points related to gastrinomas associated with the genetic syndrome of Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia type 1 (MEN1) (25% of cases) will also be mentioned [11,12]. Insulinomas are neuroendocrine neoplasms located in the pancreas that secrete insulin, which causes a distinct syndrome characterized by symptoms due to hypoglycemia [2,13,14,15]. The symptoms are typically associated with fasting and the majority of patients have symptoms secondary to hypoglycemic central nervous system (CNS) effects (headaches, confusion, visual disturbances, etc.) or due to catecholamine excess secondary to hypoglycemia (sweating, tremor, palpitations, etc.) [2,3,13,14,15]. RFTs can occur in the pancreas or in other locations (VIPomas, somatostatinomas, GRHomas, ACTHomas, p-NETs causing carcinoid syndrome or hypercalcemia (PTHrp-omas)) (table ​(table1)1) [1,2,3,4,5,7]. Each of the established RFT syndromes is associated with a distinct clinical syndrome reflecting the actions of the ectopically secreted hormone. Other RFTs are listed as causing a possible specific syndrome either because there are too few cases or there is disagreement about whether the described features are actually a distinct syndrome (table ​(table1)1) [1,2,3,4,5,7].