An increased interest in gastro-entero-pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (GEP NENs) has recently been observed. These are rare neoplasms and their detection in recent years has improved. Over 50% of GEP NENs are carcinoids, and they are usually found incidentally during surgery in the small intestine and appendix and at diagnosis in distant metastases, mainly to the liver. There is a need for...

Although cystic lesions of the pancreas are considered relatively rare, improved diagnostics have resulted in higher reported incidence. Cystic neoplasms comprise approximately 10% to 15% of primary cystic masses of the pancreas, and 1% to 15% of all pancreatic neoplasms. While non-neoplastic cystic lesions predominantly affect men with a wide age range, the vast majority of neoplastic cysts oc...

Pancreatic mesenchymal neoplasms are very rare pancreatic tumours. One of them is pancreatic lipoma, often diagnosed incidentally. We herein report a case of a large lipoma of the pancreatic head, diagnosed by computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging and confirmed by ultrasound-guided fine needle biopsy (FNA) biopsy. Regarding its benign character, silent clinical course and excellent...

AIMS primary pancreatic sarcomas represent an extremely rare histopathological entity accounting for less than 0.1% of all pancreatic malignancies. Pancreatic sarcomas tend to be more aggressive and have a poor prognosis. METHODS the case of a 52 year old patient presenting with jaundice is presented and the available literature was reviewed. RESULTS primary pancreatic sarcomas are extremel...

Gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms have substantially increased over the last decades. Because of the indolent clinical course of the disease even in advance stages and the rise in the incidental diagnosis of small asymptomatic lesions, the prevalence of gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms is higher than that of pancreatic, gastric and oesophageal adenocarcinomas, makin...

Sporadic colon carcinomas, carcinomas arising in chronic ulcerative colitis, and pancreatic adenocarcinomas have been analyzed for the presence of c-Ki-ras mutations by a combination of histological enrichment, cell sorting, polymerase chain reaction, and direct sequencing. Although 60% (37/61) of sporadic colon carcinomas contained mutations in codon 12, only 1 of 17 specimens of dysplasia or ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS To assess the expression levels of cathepsins in malignant and premalignant lesions. METHODS We retrospectively included patients who underwent pancreatic surgery on pancreatic solid or cystic masses. The expression of cathepsin H, L, B and S was determined in both types of samples. Lesions were divided into three categories: malignant (pancreatic adenocarcinoma and malign...

Pancreatic cancer is caused by inherited and acquired mutations in specific cancer-associated genes. The discovery of the most common genetic alterations in pancreatic cancer has provided insight into the fundamental pathways that drive the progression from a normal cell to noninvasive precursor lesions and finally to widely metastatic disease. In addition, recent genetic discoveries have creat...

The purpose of this article is to highlight the imaging features of cystic pancreatic tumors. Common cystic pancreatic tumors include serous microcystic adenomas, mucinous cystic tumors, intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms and solid pseudopapillary tumors. These tumors have characteristic imaging features, especially on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and MR cholangiopancreaticography exa...

Intraductal papillary-mucinous tumors of the pancreas are a category of recently described tumors of the exocrine pancreas. They were reported for the first time in 1982 [1] when Ohashi et al., based on the findings of four cases of mucous secreting pancreatic cancer, theorized that those cases belonged to a group of tumors with different features with respect to common pancreatic cancer. Some ...