Consensus Guidelines for the Management and Treatment of Neuroendocrine Tumors

TLDR

Neuroendocrine tumors are heterogeneous, presenting with varied clinical features and aggressiveness, making management challenging and leaving many treatment aspects unclear, prompting the 2010 North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society consensus guidelines. The authors aim to provide consensus tables that complement existing guidelines and offer a quick, accessible reference for clinicians. They developed these tables by reviewing current evidence and organizing recommendations into concise, practitioner-friendly formats. Phase 3 trials of octreotide, sunitinib, and everolimus have shown that rigorous evaluation of novel agents is feasible and can produce practice‑changing outcomes.

Abstract

Neuroendocrine tumors are a heterogeneous group of tumors originating in various anatomic locations. The management of this disease poses a significant challenge because of the heterogeneous clinical presentations and varying degrees of aggressiveness. The recent completion of several phase 3 trials, including those evaluating octreotide, sunitinib, and everolimus, demonstrate that rigorous evaluation of novel agents in this disease is possible and can lead to practice-changing outcomes. Nevertheless, there are many aspects to the treatment of neuroendocrine tumors that remain unclear and controversial. The North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society published a set of consensus guidelines in 2010, which provided an overview for the treatment of patients with these malignancies. Here, we present a set of consensus tables intended to complement these guidelines and serve as a quick, accessible reference for the practicing physician.