Two Cases of Primary Hepatic Neuroendocrine Tumors and a Review of the Current Literature

Abstract

Neuroendocrine tumors comprise approximately 1-2% of all gastrointestinal tumors, and while the liver is the most common site for metastasis of these tumors, primary hepatic neuroendocrine tumors are very rare entities. Since first being reported in 1958, there have been less than 150 cases reported in the literature. Because of the infrequent occurrence of these tumors, the pool of data available for analysis regarding these tumors is small. As such, the medical community must rely on the publication of case report data to further enlarge this data pool, with the hopes of eventually having enough data to draw meaningful, statistically significant conclusions with regard to diagnosis and management of these rare tumors. We have encountered two patients at our institution within the last year with primary hepatic neuroendocrine tumors. We present their cases in this manuscript in an effort to contribute to the available data on the disease. We also provide a concise review of the literature available to date regarding primary hepatic neuroendocrine tumors.

Keywords

• Liver
• Hepatic
• Liver resection
• Neuroendocrine tumor