Advanced GI-NEC patients should be considered for chemotherapy treatment without delay.PS, colorectal primary and elevated platelets and LDH levels were prognostic factors for survival. Patients with Ki-67<55% were less responsive to platinum-based chemotherapy, but had a longer survival. Our data indicate that it may not be correct to consider all GI-NEC as one single disease entity.

No abstract

This study indicates that CO2 insufflation reduces pain and is safe to use in colonoscopy for sedated patients.

BackgroundThe presence of cancer-specific DNA methylation patterns in epithelial colorectal cells in human feces provides the prospect of a simple, non-invasive screening test for colorectal cancer and its precursor, the adenoma. This study investigates a panel of epigenetic markers for the detection of colorectal cancer and adenomas.MethodsCandidate biomarkers were subjected to quantitative methylation analysis in test sets of tissue samples from colorectal cancers, adenomas, and normal colonic mucosa. All findings were verified in independent clinical validation series. A total of 523 human samples were included in the study. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to evaluate the performance of the biomarker panel.ResultsPromoter hypermethylation of the genes CNRIP1, FBN1, INA, MAL, SNCA, and SPG20 was frequent in both colorectal cancers (65-94%) and adenomas (35-91%), whereas normal mucosa samples were rarely (0-5%) methylated. The combined sensitivity of at least two positives among the six markers was 94% for colorectal cancers and 93% for adenoma samples, with a specificity of 98%. The resulting areas under the ROC curve were 0.984 for cancers and 0.968 for adenomas versus normal mucosa.ConclusionsThe novel epigenetic marker panel shows very high sensitivity and specificity for both colorectal cancers and adenomas. Our findings suggest this biomarker panel to be highly suitable for early tumor detection.

Background . The diagnostic work-up and treatment of patients with neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) has undergone major recent advances and new methods are currently introduced into the clinic. An update of the WHO classifi cation has resulted in a new nomenclature dividing NENs into neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) including G1 (Ki67 index Յ 2%) and G2 (Ki67 index 3 -20%) tumours and neuroendocrine carcinomas (NECs) with Ki67 index Ͼ 20%, G3. Aim . These Nordic guidelines summarise the Nordic Neuroendocrine Tumour Group ' s current view on how to diagnose and treat NEN-patients and are meant to be useful in the daily practice for clinicians handling these patients.