Background: Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are severe and relatively rare and may affect any organ of the human body. The prevalence of NETs has increased in recent years; however, there seem to be more data on particular types, even though, despite the efforts of different guidelines, there is no consensus on how to identify different types of NETs. In this review, we investigated the countries that published the most articles about NETs, the most frequent organs affected, and the most common related topics. Methods: This work used the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) method to identify and interpret scientific information in relation to the categories in a set of documents. The HJ-Biplot method was also used to determine the relationship between the analyzed topics, by taking into consideration the years under study. Results: In this study, a literature review was conducted, from which a total of 7658 abstracts of scientific articles published between 1981 and 2020 were extracted. The United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, and Italy published the majority of studies on NETs, of which pancreatic tumors were the most studied. The five most frequent topics were t_21 (clinical benefit), t_11 (pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors), t_13 (patients one year after treatment), t_17 (prognosis of survival before and after resection), and t_3 (markers for carcinomas). Finally, the results were put through a two-way multivariate analysis (HJ-Biplot), which generated a new interpretation: we grouped topics by year and discovered which NETs were the most relevant for which years. Conclusions: The most frequent topics found in our review highlighted the severity of NETs: patients have a poor prognosis of survival and a high probability of tumor recurrence.

El cáncer de mama es un problema de salud pública, que ha venido incrementándose, ubicándose como el cáncer de mayor incidencia en las mujeres, su repercusión en la población en general ocupaba el segundo lugar a nivel mundial, siendo la neoplasia maligna más frecuente en la población femenina y en relación a los decesos por cáncer y afecta con más frecuencia a los países del primer mundo y en vías de desarrollo. Estudio observacional, descriptivo y retrospectivo realizado a pacientes diagnosticados con cáncer de mama en el Hospital Oncológico de Manabí, Ecuador. La supervivencia global y libre de enfermedad a seis años se estableció a partir del tiempo trascurrido desde el diagnóstico hasta la ocurrencia de un evento o fecha del último contacto, con límite a diciembre de 2015. De los 403 pacientes, los límites de edad fueron 15 y 90 años, con media de 56.08 años. Se considero el tamaño del tumor, donde (T1) representa el 26.55%, (T2) representaron 45.66%, la supervivencia global fue de 80% a 6 años. Los pacientes en etapas avanzadas tuvieron menores probabilidades de supervivir con un porcentaje del 43%. Con el modelo de regresión de Cox, fue posible demostrar asociación estadísticamente significativa entre el tamaño del tumor y la supervivencia. El estudio demuestra que los pacientes en etapas avanzadas tienen menores probabilidades de supervivir, por lo que es imperativo que se continúen esfuerzos en promoción de la salud hasta conseguir que la detección sea en etapas curables.

Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are relative rare, affecting neuroendocrine cells throughout the body. Most tumors are diagnosed at advanced stages. NETs prevalence has increased in the last years but there is little data available in developing countries. The aim of this study was to describe symptoms associated with NETs in patients of the Society for the Fight Against Cancer (SOLCA) in Ecuador from 2005 to 2020; using logistic biplots, in a hospital database, generating binary responses (presence/absence) relevant to this study. The results showed that the mean age was 59 and the study showed no difference in prevalence between genders. NETs were mainly found in lungs (19%), followed by stomach (18%) and skin (9%). Most patients had pathological diagnosis G2 and G3 (30% and 70%, respectively). Symptoms as cough, dyspnea, weight loss, diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain, dyspepsia, hypertensive crisis, distended abdomen and intestinal obstruction had p values <0.05. Additionally, the statistical analysis showed that cough and intestinal obstruction were also common, bearing in mind that patients had most frequent NETs in the lungs and skin. In summary, our results indicate that symptoms of NETs patients were positively associated with lung and skin. Further investigation is needed focusing on the type of NETs and their symptoms in order to establish an early marker for diagnosis.