Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jul 14, 2015; 21(26): 8118-8124
Published online Jul 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i26.8118
Efficacy of endoscopic ultrasonography-guided fine needle aspiration for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor grading
Mitsuru Sugimoto, Tadayuki Takagi, Takuto Hikichi, Rei Suzuki, Ko Watanabe, Jun Nakamura, Hitomi Kikuchi, Naoki Konno, Yuichi Waragai, Hiroyuki Asama, Mika Takasumi, Hiroshi Watanabe, Katsutoshi Obara, Hiromasa Ohira
Mitsuru Sugimoto, Tadayuki Takagi, Rei Suzuki, Jun Nakamura, Hitomi Kikuchi, Naoki Konno, Yuichi Waragai, Hiroyuki Asama, Mika Takasumi, Hiroshi Watanabe, Hiromasa Ohira, Department of Gastroenterology and Rheumatology, Fukushima Medical University, School of Medicine, Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture 960-1295, Japan
Takuto Hikichi, Ko Watanabe, Katsutoshi Obara, Department of Endoscopy, Fukushima Medical University Hospital, Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture 960-1295, Japan
Author contributions: Sugimoto M designed and performed the research and wrote the paper; Takagi T designed the research and supervised the report; Hikichi T designed the research and contributed to the analysis; Suzuki R, Watanabe K, Nakamura J, Kikuchi H, Konno N, Waragai Y, Asama H and Takasumi M provided clinical advice; Watanabe H, Obara K and Ohira H supervised the report.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Fukushima Medical University Hospital.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent. For full disclosure, the details of the study are published on the home page of Fukushima Medical University.
Conflict-of-interest statement: We have no financial relationships to disclose.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: 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/
Correspondence to: Tadayuki Takagi, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Gastroenterology and Rheumatology, Fukushima Medical University, School of Medicine, 1 Hikarigaoka, Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture 960-1295, Japan. daccho@fmu.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-24-5471202 Fax: +81-24-5472055
Received: January 19, 2015
Peer-review started: January 22, 2015
First decision: March 10, 2015
Revised: March 27, 2015
Accepted: May 20, 2015
Article in press: May 21, 2015
Published online: July 14, 2015
Processing time: 175 Days and 12.7 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: This is a retrospective study to evaluate the efficacy of endoscopic ultrasonography-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) for grading pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs). The concordance rate for grading between specimens obtained by EUS-FNA and surgery using the World Health Organization 2010 classification (Ki-67 indexing) was 87.5% in eight evaluated patients. In the two unresectable cases, chemotherapy was performed after grading was established based on the analysis of specimens obtained by EUS-FNA. Both treatments were adequately effective. EUS-FNA was useful for diagnosing PNET and enabled informed decisions on appropriate treatment plans by identifying neuroendocrine tumor or neuroendocrine carcinoma.