Treatment of pulmonary neuroendocrine tumours: state of the art and future developments.

The current classification of pulmonary neuroendocrine tumours includes four subtypes: low-grade typical carcinoid tumour (TC), intermediate-grade atypical carcinoid tumour (AC), and two high-grade malignancies: large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Unfortunately, with the exclusion of SCLC, no large phase II and III trials for pulmonary neuroendocrine tumours have been published. Thus, several treatment approaches are available for their treatment but none of them has been validated in appropriately designed and adequately sized clinical trials. The main problem of the published studies is that they include neuroendocrine tumours from various sites of origin with different clinical behaviour. It is important that future studies consider these tumours separately. In this regard, increased awareness and referral of these patients to tertiary centres, in which a multidisciplinary management is available, may be of value. The aim of this review is to evaluate the state of the art and discuss future developments in the management of pulmonary neuroendocrine tumours excluding SCLC which we consider should be addressed in a different issue. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Citation

Cesare Gridelli, Antonio Rossi, Giuseppe Airoma, Roberto Bianco, Raffaele Costanzo, Bruno Daniele, Giovanni De Chiara, Giuseppe Grimaldi, Luciana Irtelli, Paolo Maione, Alessandro Morabito, Franco Vito Piantedosi, Ferdinando Riccardi. Treatment of pulmonary neuroendocrine tumours: state of the art and future developments. Cancer treatment reviews. 2013 Aug;39(5):466-72

Mesh Tags

Substances

PMID: 22818212

search → result