Preliminary experience with a new institutional tumor board dedicated to patients with neuroendocrine neoplasms

Abstract

Purpose To determine the decision patterns of a neuroendocrine neoplasm (NEN) tumor board (TB) and the factors behind those. Methods We retrospectively reviewed all NEN-TB recommendations from 07/2018 to 12/2021 and recorded patient characteristics, TB outcomes and associations between them. Results A total of 652 patient entries were identified. Median age of participants was 61 years and an equal number of men and women were presented. Most patients (33.4%) had tumors originating in the small bowel with 16.8% of high grade and 25.9% of pancreatic origin. Imaging was reviewed 97.2% of the time, with most frequently reviewed modalities being PET (55.3%) and CT (44.3%). Imaging review determined that there was no disease progression 20.8% of the time and significant treatment changes were recommended in 36.1% of patients. Major pathology amendments occurred in 3.7% of cases and a clinical trial was identified in 2.6%. There was no association between patient or disease presentation with the tumor board outcomes. There was a slight decrease in number of patients discussed per session, from 10.0 to 8.2 ( p < 0.001) when the TB transitioned to a virtual format during the COVID-19 pandemic but all other factors remained unchanged. Conclusion NEN-TB relies heavily on image review, can impact significant treatment changes in patients with rare tumors like NENs, and was not affected by the switch to a virtual format. Finally, none of the examined factors were predictive of the tumor board recommendations.