Dell'Unto E, Panzuto F, Esposito G. Rectal neuroendocrine tumors: Can we predict their behavior? World J Gastroenterol 2025; 31(5): 101150 [DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i5.101150]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Gianluca Esposito, MD, PhD, Senior Researcher, Department of Medical-Surgical Sciences and Translational Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Via G Papanicolau Snc, Rome 00189, Lazio, Italy. gianluca.esposito@uniroma1.it
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Letter to the Editor
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Gastroenterol. Feb 7, 2025; 31(5): 101150 Published online Feb 7, 2025. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i5.101150
Rectal neuroendocrine tumors: Can we predict their behavior?
Elisabetta Dell'Unto, Francesco Panzuto, Gianluca Esposito
Elisabetta Dell'Unto, Francesco Panzuto, Gianluca Esposito, Department of Medical-Surgical Sciences and Translational Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome 00189, Lazio, Italy
Author contributions: Dell’Unto E performed the research and drafted the manuscript; Panzuto F and Esposito G interpreted the data and critically reviewed the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Gianluca Esposito, MD, PhD, Senior Researcher, Department of Medical-Surgical Sciences and Translational Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Via G Papanicolau Snc, Rome 00189, Lazio, Italy. gianluca.esposito@uniroma1.it
Received: September 5, 2024 Revised: November 23, 2024 Accepted: December 3, 2024 Published online: February 7, 2025 Processing time: 116 Days and 1.1 Hours
Abstract
Rectal neuroendocrine tumors (r-NETs) are the second most common type of neuroendocrine tumor in the gastrointestinal tract, with an increase in incidence in the last decades. They are low-grade tumors and, given their low risk of metastasis, current guidelines recommend endoscopic resection for small lesions. The GATIS predicting score, proposed by Zeng et al, represents an innovative model designed to predict individualized survival outcomes for patients with r-NETs, analyzing the relationship between clinicopathological features and patient prognoses. The authors identified tumor grade, T stage, tumor size, age, and prognostic nutritional index as key prognostic factors, demonstrating that the GATIS Score provides a more accurate prognosis assessment compared to the World Health Organization classification or the tumor-node-metastasis staging system. Nevertheless, further larger prospective studies are necessary, and the scientific community's efforts in this context should be directed toward developing international multicentric prospective studies, with the ultimate aim of accurately defining and understanding the behavior of these conditions.
Core Tip: This study proposes the GATIS score, an innovative model designed to predict individualized survival outcomes in patients with rectal neuroendocrine tumors. This model analyzes the relationship between clinicopathological features and patient prognoses. Nevertheless, additional prognostic factors (such as genetic and molecular markers) need to be investigated with further larger multicentric prospective studies.
