New Tool Assesses Recurrence Risk With Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors

TUESDAY, Dec. 30, 2025 (HealthDay News) — A new tool can help physicians determine which patients with localized pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNETs) have an increased risk for cancer recurrence, according to a study published online Dec. 17 in JAMA Surgery.

Marco Ventin, M.D., from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and colleagues developed and validated a tumor recurrence and survival risk score for patients with lymph node-negative PanNETs. The analysis included data from 770 patients with localized PanNETs treated with surgery at five high-volume U.S. institutions from 2000 to 2023.

The researchers found that recurrence occurred in 82 patients (10.6 percent) at a median of 32.4 months after surgery. Independent predictors of recurrence included male sex (odds ratio [OR], 2.2), tumor size 3 cm or larger (OR, 2.64), World Health Organization grade 2 or higher (OR, 3.70), and lymphovascular invasion (OR, 3.84). The risk score demonstrated strong performance (area under the receiver operating characteristic, 0.83 internally; 0.95 externally). By risk group, recurrence rates were 2.4 percent, 9.0 percent, and 27.7 percent, while 10-year disease-free survival rates were 96.1 percent, 83.6 percent, and 51.3 percent for low-risk, moderate-risk, and high-risk groups, respectively. Recurrent tumors had higher tumor mutational burden, somatic mutation count, and somatic mutations in CDC42BPB, DAXX, ERI2, GALNT9, MTOR, NUMA1, and TRPC7 genes.

“We now have a way to identify patients whose higher risk of recurrence may have been previously overlooked,” coauthor Cristina R. Ferrone, M.D., also from Cedars-Sinai, said in a statement. “This gives us the opportunity to change the way we care for this patient population in a meaningful way.”

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