Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNET) are rare with an incidence of 3–4/1000,000. These tumors are non functional in 70–80% of the cases. The vast majority of them are differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma. Distant metastasis detected frequently at the onset of diagnosis. Liver and lymph node metastases are the most frequent localizations. Cerebral, skeletal and pulmonary are not infrequent. Primary and metastatic small cell carcinomas with NE differentiation in the parotid gland are also documented.

Case report: A 54 years old patient presented with cerebral metastatic lesions in 2005. Post surgical histopathological examination confirmed the neuroendocrine nature of these lesions. Her primary lesion, a PNET, was discovered in 2008 only after discovery of ovarian metastases. One year later, a maxillary nodule was extirpated. This was followed by normalization of CgA levels. Histopathological study of her pancreatic, ovarian, cerebral and maxillary lesions confirmed the same type of neuroendocrine tumour.

Discussion and conclusion: Salivary glands usually harbor metastatic melanomas and other skin cancers. Few cases of metastatic NETs in the parotid glands were documented in the literature. Neuroendocrine differentiation of salivary carcinomas is also reported. We describe a metastatic PNET in the maxillary gland which we treated with surgery followed by radio-chemotherapy. It is wise to include NET in the differential diagnosis of salivary gland tumours and to do immunohistochemical staining by NE markers on a salivary tumour in patients with history of NET.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.