Surgical treatment of pancreatic islet cell tumor: report of 44 cases.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Open approach was the conventional ways for surgical treatment of pancreatic islet cell tumor. The study was to report the outcome of open approach with pancreatic islet cell tumor in a single institution in China.

METHODOLOGY

Forty-four consecutive pancreatic islet cell tumor patients who underwent surgical treatment were retrospectively analyzed.

RESULTS

There were 16 pancreatic nonfunctioning islet cell tumor (PNIT) patients and 28 functioning islet cell tumor patients which were insulinoma. Seventeen PNIT were found and larger than media size of thirty-nine insulinoma (4.53 +/- 2.67 vs. 1.87 +/- 0.86, p < 0.05) in diameter. The size of malignant and benign PNIT has a significant difference (6.33 +/- 2.06 vs. 3.45 +/- 2.51, p < 0.05 ), but not in insulinoma. Among PNIT, distal pancreatectomy plus splenectomy were required in 8 patients, while segmental pancreatectomy was performed in 3 cases. In addition, 1 and 4 patients received pancreatoduodenectomy and tumor enucleation respectively. Seventeen insulinomas patients (60.7%) underwent enucleation, and 2 patients (7.1%) underwent distal pancreatectomy with splenectomy. Segmental pancreatectomy, pancreatoduodenectomy and distal pancreatectomy preserving spleen was performed in 2, 4 and 3 cases respectively. The percentage was zero in-hospital death. The morbidity was 6.2% (1/16) for PNIT and 28.6% (8/28) for insulinomas.

CONCLUSIONS

Open surgery remains a nice way in the management of pancreatic islet cell tumor at least in our institution.