Myocardial metastases from neuroendocrine tumors: incidence and relevance

Excerpt

Well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors of pancreatic or gut origin (formerly termed pancreatic NETs and carcinoids) frequently metastasize to lymph nodes and liver. Myocardial metastases are far less frequent and estimated at 1–4 % of cases [1‐4]. In their article on the detection with [⁶⁸Ga-DOTA⁰,Tyr³]octreotide (⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC) PET/CT of heart metastases from ileal neuroendocrine tumors, elsewhere in this volume, Calissendorff et al. [5] report an incidence of 4.3 % (4/92 patients). All 4 patients presented with metastatic disease, and 3 of them had bone involvement, which is usually associated with widespread disease and constitutes a negative prognostic factor. …