Both SPECT and PET can be very helpful in diagnosing NETs; however, PET may give more accurate information about the primary and metastatic lesions of NETs.
All patients diagnosed with NET being followed at the medical oncology services who had received treatment with lanreotide in combination with a novel therapeutic target agent for at least 3 months prior to data collection into an electronic Data Report Form were eligible to be included in the retrospective analysis.
The limitations of this study were as follows: First, different pathologists at each institution diagnosed esophageal NETs.
The number of patients diagnosed with NETs and those surviving some forms of neuroendocrine cancer is increasing (Halfdanarson et al, 2008; Tsikitis et al, 2012), and hence it is important to focus on the long-term effects that the cancer itself and the treatments offered may have on the patient (Department of Health, 2010).
In the group treated with Y-DOTATATE alone, 12 patients were diagnosed with foregut NETs (9 pancreas NET: 3 gastrinoma, 1 insulinoma, 5 non-functioning tumours; 3 bronchial NET), 11 patients with midgut NETs (8 carcinoid, 3 small intestinal), 1 patient with hindgut NET (rectal NET) and 1 patient with unknown primary tumours.
The SSTR-based molecular imaging is a noninvasive and quantitative method to diagnose the NETs and evaluate the therapeutic efficacy for NETs.
We enrolled patients with metastatic/recurrent NET diagnosed between January 1996 and July 2007 and retrospectively analyzed.
As previously published, genetic alteration was diagnosed when the net percentage of cells with genetic alteration, obtained subtracting the total percentage of group 3 from the cellular population belonging to group 2, was >15%, (Piqueras et al, 2009).
Patients were diagnosed as having an NET both morphologically and immunohistochemically.
In more than 50%% of the patients, NETs are diagnosed at a relatively late stage, often with metastatic spread [4], which leaves little chance for curative surgery.
