Prognostic Features in Surgically Resected Well-Differentiated Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors: an Analysis of 904 Patients with 7882 Person-Years of Follow-Up

The clinical behavior of well-differentiated pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNETs) is difficult to predict. In order to define, more accurately, prognosticators for patients with a surgically resected PanNET, the pathologic features and Ki-67 immunolabeling indexes of PanNETs resected from 904 consecutive patients at an academic tertiary care hospital were correlated with patient outcome. The mean patient age at surgery was 56.6 years (SD 14.0), 477 were male (52.8%), and 7882 person-years of follow-up were obtained (mean 8.8 years, SD 6.5). The 10-year survival was 81% (95% CI: 77,86%) for patients with G1 PanNETs (Ki-67 <3%), 68% (95% CI: 61,76%) for patients with G2a PanNETs (Ki-67 3 - <10%), 44% (95% CI: 29,66%) for patients with G2b PanNETs (Ki-67 of 10%- ≤20%), and 23% (95% CI: 8,61%) for patients with G3 PanNETs. Vascular invasion (HR 3.0, p <0.0001), tumor size ≥ 2 cm (HR 2.88, p <0.0001), perineural invasion (HR 2.42, p<0.0001), and positive margins (HR 2.18, p <0.0001) were associated with worse overall survival. Insulinoma (HR 0.34, p=3e-04), sclerosing variant (HR 0.47, p=0.05), and cystic variant (HR 0.61, p=0.05) were associated with improved overall survival. T, N and M stages were all statistically significant classifiers of overall survival. Similar associations were found with respect to disease relapse. There was a significant (P<0.001) increase in the proportion of patients diagnosed with stage I vs stage IV disease over time. This study supports the classification of PanNETs into four grades (G1, G2a, G2b, and G3) based on Ki-67 labeling, which allows a more accurate prognostic assessments of patients.