Surgical treatment of gastric, enteric and pancreatic endocrine tumors Part 2. Treatment of Hepatic Metastases

The development of hepatic metastases (HM) marks a turning point in the evolution and prognosis of well-differentiated endocrine tumors (EI). Management is usually multicisciplinary (chemotherapy, arterial chemo-embolization, percutaneous ablation, somatostatin analogs, biotherapy, and surgery). A thorough pre-operative work-up is neecessary to exclude extrahepatic disease and to detect tiny HM's. Complete resection (R0) is the only curative treatment for well-differentiated ET with HM. The type of resection is specific to each case and may range from wedge resection of a metastasis to complex hepatectomy with simultaneous resection of the primary ET. Cytoreductive surgery may be indicated for palliation when medical therapy fails to control endocrine symptoms. Operative mortality is low (0-6%) and global survival is 60-70% after R) resection of HM of well-differentiated ET's. After resection of HM involving only one hepatic lobe, 5 year survival is better than 90%. When HM are multiple, bilobar and synchronous, the prognosis is very poor-only 10% of such patients can have a complete resection and this often requires a long prologue of ancillary procedures (chemotherapy, chemoembolization, portal vein ligation, percutaneous ablation). Hepatic transplantation (HT) has only a limited role in the treatment of HM for ET; mortality is high when HT is associated with large and complex resections, i.e. pancreaticoduodenectorny. Although there is no consensus in the literature, HT should be limited to the most optimal cases (young, good general health, well-differentiated tumor, slow evolution, complete-resection of the primary tumor, and unresectable liver metastases). Global survival for HT in patients with ET is 60% at 2 years, 47% at 5 years; tumor-free survival at 5 years is 24%. HT for HM has better survival results for ET's of intestinal origin (carcinoids) than for duodenopancreatic ET's.