The role of Pet-Ct in neuroendocrine tumors without an identified primary focus: A case report and review

Neuroendocrine tumors are a rare group of heterogeneous tumors, mostly developed in the gastrointestinal and respiratory tract.These tumors show overexpression of somatostatin receptors on the cell membrane, in which type 2 SSTRs are more common.Functional imaging techniques are using for the NETs diagnosis and treatment.In this case a patient with neuroendocrine tumor (NET) without primary focus was admitted to the hospital due to recurrent episodes of cholecystitis.During diagnostic investigation incidentally anechoic foci in the patient's liver were detected and pathological examination of this foci showed that it's a metastasis of neuroendocrine tumor.The patient was previously investigated for the primary focus identification of NET, but no significant outcome was found.Hence, we used SSTR-based PET/CT scan 68Ga-DOTA-peptides, which showed the primary focus of NET in the tail of pancreas.Therefore, we concluded that the PET/CT scan 68Ga-DOTA-TATE showed significant outcome with identification of tumor localization.