A case of a pancreatic head tumor which was difficult to preoperatively diagnose

Abstract

A 73-year-old man was referred for gastrointestinal surgery to our hospital due to rectal cancer. The CT before the operation showed a tumor, 20 mm in size, in the pancreatic head. Somatostatin receptor scintigraphy showed mild accumulation. Prior to the surgery for rectal cancer, the CT showed that the tumor's size had increased in the 5 months since the first visit. We considered a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (P-NET) based on the image, and the patient wished to undergo a pancreaticoduodenectomy without a preoperative pathological diagnosis. The lesion was diagnosed as a pathologically solid variant of serous cystic neoplasm (SCN). We experienced a case of a solid variant of SCN which was difficult to distinguish from an NET.