UMMS Affiliation
Department of Surgery; Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology; School of Medicine; Senior Scholars Program
Publication Date
2017-12-01
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Digestive System Diseases | Gastroenterology | Neoplasms | Surgery | Surgical Procedures, Operative
Abstract
Background: Neuroendocine tumors (NETs) or carcinoids arise at many different sites of the gastrointestinal tract. The small intestine is the most common site for NETs. Diagnosing small bowel carcinoids remains challenging given their non-specific presentations and the overall low incidence of small bowel tumors. Video capsule endoscopy (VCE) has significanly improved our ability to detect small bowel malignancies. We explore the value of VCE in the initial workup and management of a series of small bowel carcinoid patients.
Methods: We retrospectively analyzed adult patients undergoing surgical management for small bowel lesions from July 2005 to September 2015 at a tertiary care center. Patient characteristics, presenting symptomatology, diagnostic workup and surgical management were analyzed among patients with histologically confirmed small bowel carcinoid tumors.
Results: Our study identified 16 patients treated surgically for small bowel carcinoids. The majority of patients (87.5%) presented with either occult gastrointestinal bleeding or anemia. Most patients (87.5%) were initially evaluated with various endoscopic and imaging modalities before all ultimately undergoing surgery. Seventy-five percent of patients had a VCE, with 83.3% (10/12) having positive findings that correlated with intraoperative findings compared to 62.5% (5/8) with computed tomography scan, 21.4% (3/14) with colonoscopy, 44% (4/9) with deep enteroscopy, and 0% (0/9) with esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD).
Conclusions: In the absence of any contraindications, VCE is an effective endoscopic modality in the diagnostic workup of small bowel NETs. Furthermore, positive VCE findings appear to highly correlate with surgical findings, thus suggesting a valuable role for VCE in the initial surgical assessment of patients with small bowel NETs.
Keywords
Carcinoid, Neuroendocrine tumors, Small bowel, Surgical resection, Video capsule endoscopy
Rights and Permissions
Copyright 2017, Noujaim et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
DOI of Published Version
10.14740/gr937w
Source
Gastroenterology Res. 2017 Dec;10(6):347-351. doi: 10.14740/gr937w. Epub 2018 Jan 3. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Gastroenterology research
Related Resources
PubMed ID
29317942
Repository Citation
Noujaim MG, Green J, Min M, Schlieve CR, Patel K, Cahan MA, Cave DR. (2017). Carcinoids and Capsules: A Case Series Highlighting the Utility of Capsule Endoscopy in Patients With Small Bowel Carcinoids. Open Access Articles. https://doi.org/10.14740/gr937w. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/oapubs/3334
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Included in
Digestive System Diseases Commons, Gastroenterology Commons, Neoplasms Commons, Surgery Commons, Surgical Procedures, Operative Commons
Comments
Michael Noujaim participated in this study as a medical student as part of the Senior Scholars Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.