Well or poorly differentiated nonfunctioning neuroendocrine carcinoma of the pancreas: A single institution experience with 17 cases

TNM stage and grade in predicting the prognosis of operated, non‐functioning neuroendocrine carcinoma of the pancreas—a single‐institution experience

“…On the one hand, for example, treatment outcome of G1 carcinomas was excellent and patients were still alive after 54, 55, and 138 months Patients with G3 lesions, on the other hand, did very poorly with a 1-year survival rate of 11% and no survivors after 2 years. This marked and significant effect of tumor differentiation is in line with the data published by Franko et al [32], Bettini et al [25], and by our own group [24], which all limited the often reported favorable course of operated neuroendocrine pancreatic carcinoma (nepC) [1,4,10,12,16,20,21,[33][34][35]] to well-differ- entiated carcinomas. In contrast, the prognosis of poorly differentiated carcinomas, the highly malignant nature of which has been addressed sporadically at best [8,36,37], did not differ from that of ductal pancreatic cancer.…”

“…A number of recent publications on nfnepC have failed to distinguish specifically between well and poorly differentiated lesions [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Most authors, however, have made this distinction [5,6,7,9,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] and have agreed that histological differentiation has significant effect on prognosis. Eight of these authors have presented incidence data of poorly differentiated carcinomas (8-21%) [5,6,7,9,17,27,28,31].…”

Effect of concomitant variant histology on the prognosis of patients with upper urinary tract urothelial carcinoma after radical nephroureterectomy

“…Sarcomatoid differentiation, 6 patients in our cohort, was the second poorest subtype with an average survival of only 10 months (range: 3-18 mo). This relationship between these pathological patterns and poor prognosis were also confirmed by other studies for small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma differentiation of pancreas and sarcomatoid carcinoma differentiation of the lung [18,19]. Additionally, obstruction of the ureteric or the pelvicalyceal system or both caused by rapid growth of UTUC with CVH may also contribute to poorer prognosis.…”

EUS-FNA predicts 5-year survival in pancreatic endocrine tumors

“…Although well and poorly differentiated lesions did not differ in terms of the T categories, poorly differentiated lesions had more node involvement (66% vs 20%), more metastasis (40% vs 17%), and lower 5-year survival rates (0% vs 100%) than did well-differentiated lesions. 17 This different pattern of the 2 subsets of nonfunctioning neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer supports the high diagnostic and predictive value of the WHO classification in surgical specimens.…”

“…Care should be exercised when this diagnosis is obtained by EUS-FNA. According to Sellner et al, 17 the better outcome of surgical treatment of nonfunctioning neuroendocrine pancreatic carcinoma, compared to that of ductal pancreatic cancer, was confined to well-differentiated lesions. The outcome of undifferentiated endocrine lesions was as poor as for ductal pancreatic cancer.…”