Pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (PanNENs) are rare tumors, but their incidental diagnosis has significantly increased due to the widespread use of imaging studies. Therefore, most PanNENs are now diagnosed when completely asymptomatic and in early stages. PanNENs are classified according to their grade (Ki-67 index) and can be functional (F-) or nonfunctional (NF-) depending on the presence or absence of a clinical, hormonal hypersecretion syndrome. The mainstay treatment of PanNENs is a surgery that is mostly curative but also associated with significant short- and long-term adverse events. Therefore, less invasive alternative locoregional treatment modalities are warranted. Recently, few case reports and two case series have described EUS-guided radiofrequency ablation (EUS-RFA) for the treatment of patients with both F-PanNENs and NF-PanNENs. If for F-PanNENs EUS-RFA can very easily become the standard of care, for NF-PanNENEs it is still controversial how to select patients for EUS-RFA. A balance between overtreatment (i.e., RFA/surgery in patients who will not progress) and undertreatment (locoregional treatments in patients with undetected metastases) needs to be found based on solid data. The decision should also take into account patients' comorbidity and risk of postoperative death, life expectancy, tumor location, risk of postoperative fistula and postoperative morbidity, and risk of long-term exocrine and/or endocrine insufficiency. To answer the important question on which a patient should be treated with EUS-RFA, properly designed studies to evaluate the efficacy of this treatment in large cohorts of patients with NF-PanNENs and to establish prognostic factors associated with treatment response are urgently needed.

Endoscopic Ultrasound, Official publication of Euro-EUS Scientific Committee, Asia-Pacific EUS Task Force,China

Background and Objectives: Procurement of tissue core biopsy samples may overcome some of the limitations of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-guided fine-needle aspiration. We aimed at assessing the safety, histological sample procurement yield, and diagnostic accuracy of a newly available histology needle. Materials and Methods: Data from consecutive patients with pancreatic solid lesions who underwent EUS-fine needle biopsy (EUS-FNB) using the 22-gauge Acquire™ needle were retrospectively retrieved from four tertiary care centers database. Results: Fifty-nine patients (mean age 68 ± 12 years; male/female 29/30) with pancreatic solid lesions underwent EUS-FNB using the 22-gauge Acquire™ needle. The biopsy was done transgastrically in 22 (37.3%) patients and transduodenally in 37 (62.7%) cases. A mean of 2.8 ± 0.45 needle passes per lesion site were performed, without any major complication. A tissue core biopsy sample for histological evaluation was obtained in 55 (93.2%) cases. In the additional four cases, the specimen obtained resulted adequate for cytological evaluation. Considering malignant versus nonmalignant disease, sensitivity, specificity, negative likelihood ratio, positive likelihood ratio, and diagnostic accuracy were 98.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 90.6–99.7), 100% (95% CI, 43.6–100), 0.018 (95% CI, 0.003–0.125), 295.6 (95% CI, 0–9.3 × 10¹⁰), and 98.3% (95% CI, 94.9–100), respectively. Conclusions: EUS-FNB using the 22-gauge Acquire™ needle is able to reach a very high procurement yield and diagnostic accuracy. Large prospective studies are warranted to further evaluate the utility of this newly developed needle.