TY - JOUR
T1 - A Systematic Review of Symptoms and Quality of Life Issues in Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumours
AU - Topping, Megan
AU - Gray, Debra
AU - Friend, Elizabeth
AU - Davies, Albert
AU - Ramage, John
PY - 2017/4/20
Y1 - 2017/4/20
N2 - Purpose Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNETs) are rare neoplasms, in that they may only
present symptoms of the hormone secreted, without any generic cancer issues. It is thus important
to measure quality of life (QoL) in these patients by evaluating issues relevant and important to
them, as opposed to general cancer issues. This paper systematically reviews papers addressing the
symptoms and QoL implications of pNETs, and evaluates each subtype separately, with the aim to
create a list of QoL issues relevant to these patient groups. Methods Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL,
PsycInfo, Web of Science, Scopus, OpenGrey and the Cochrane Library were searched for
publications (1990‐2016) reporting symptoms and QoL issues in pNETs. Results Following screening
of 2797 papers, 69 articles were eligible for data extraction. From these papers, 84 different
symptoms or QoL issues were extracted: 21 for gastrinoma, 18 for glucagonoma, 50 for insulinoma,
10 for VIPoma and 15 for non‐functioning pNETs. No issues were reported for somatostatinoma,
PPoma or ACTHoma. The most frequently reported symptoms vary by subtype. Conclusions This
review emphasises the need to develop a QoL measure for pNETs with specific items relevant to the
different subtypes, due to the distinct symptoms reported. Following from this review, patient and
healthcare professional interviews will be conducted in large cohorts across many different countries
to collect more data on QoL issues specific to pNETs. This data will all be collated with the aim to
create a QoL measure for pNETs.
AB - Purpose Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNETs) are rare neoplasms, in that they may only
present symptoms of the hormone secreted, without any generic cancer issues. It is thus important
to measure quality of life (QoL) in these patients by evaluating issues relevant and important to
them, as opposed to general cancer issues. This paper systematically reviews papers addressing the
symptoms and QoL implications of pNETs, and evaluates each subtype separately, with the aim to
create a list of QoL issues relevant to these patient groups. Methods Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL,
PsycInfo, Web of Science, Scopus, OpenGrey and the Cochrane Library were searched for
publications (1990‐2016) reporting symptoms and QoL issues in pNETs. Results Following screening
of 2797 papers, 69 articles were eligible for data extraction. From these papers, 84 different
symptoms or QoL issues were extracted: 21 for gastrinoma, 18 for glucagonoma, 50 for insulinoma,
10 for VIPoma and 15 for non‐functioning pNETs. No issues were reported for somatostatinoma,
PPoma or ACTHoma. The most frequently reported symptoms vary by subtype. Conclusions This
review emphasises the need to develop a QoL measure for pNETs with specific items relevant to the
different subtypes, due to the distinct symptoms reported. Following from this review, patient and
healthcare professional interviews will be conducted in large cohorts across many different countries
to collect more data on QoL issues specific to pNETs. This data will all be collated with the aim to
create a QoL measure for pNETs.
KW - Neuroendocrine tumour
KW - neuroendocrinology
KW - quality of life
KW - symptoms
U2 - 10.1159/000475793
DO - 10.1159/000475793
M3 - Article
JO - Neuroendocrinology
JF - Neuroendocrinology
SN - 0028-3835
ER -