ENETS Consensus Guidelines for the Standard of Care in Neuroendocrine Tumors.

ties involved in managing patients with gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. They were assigned to four working groups according to their specific clinical experience: Pathology (5), Biochemistry (3), Radiology (4), Nuclear Medicine (3), Surgery (5), Chemotherapy (6), Biotherapy (4), Echocardiography (4) and Follow-Up and Clinical Documentation (3). The complete list is provided at the end of this commentary, as well as at the end of each of the following papers. The conference was divided into sessions devoted to the specific topics. Ursula Plöckinger prepared a working booklet in advance, asking the basic questions and giving suggestions to each of the possible procedures. She also provided references. The booklet served as a basic structure for the discussion. All questions had to be answered, allowing for more but not less input as already found in the working booklet. The booklet was provided to all the conference participants. The work was organized such that after a short introduction and presentation of the topic in a plenary session, each working group gathered separately to discuss groupspecific questions. A maximum of three working group sessions were organized to run in parallel. The members of the consensus conference were assigned to take part in one of the three parallel sessions. The European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS) held, in 2005 and 2006, with leading experts in the field, two consecutive consensus conferences resulting in the publication of a highly successful revision of previous guidelines on the clinical management of neuroendocrine tumors (NET) of the digestive tract. As a consequence of these meetings, it became clear that clinical guidelines by themselves give a good overview dealing with NET patients. However, for daily clinical practice some suggestions for the implementation of these consensus guidelines were clearly desirable. Based on the work already accomplished, the same group of experts convened to develop recommendations for technical and practical details necessary for implementing the consensus guidelines. This third consensus conference was held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, from November 29 until December 1, 2007.