Preoperative Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor imaging reduces surgical trauma and pancreatic tissue loss in insulinoma patients: a report of three cases

Anna Silvia Wenning; Paul Kirchner; Kwadwo Antwi; Melpomeni Fani; Damian Wild; Emanuel Christ; Beat Gloor

doi:10.1186/s13037-015-0064-7

Preoperative Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor imaging reduces surgical trauma and pancreatic tissue loss in insulinoma patients: a report of three cases

Patient Saf Surg. 2015 Jun 2:9:23. doi: 10.1186/s13037-015-0064-7. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Anna Silvia Wenning¹, Paul Kirchner², Kwadwo Antwi³, Melpomeni Fani³, Damian Wild³, Emanuel Christ², Beat Gloor¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine, Inselspital, University Hospital, CH-3010 Berne, Switzerland.
² Division of Endocrinology, Diabetology and Clinical Nutrition, Inselspital, University Hospital, Berne, Switzerland.
³ Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland.

Abstract

Background: Insulinomas are rare tumors, in the majority of cases best treated by surgical resection. Preoperative localization of insulinoma is challenging. The more precise the preoperative localization the less invasive and safer is the resection. The purpose of the study is to check the impact of a new technique to localize insulinoma on the surgical strategy.

Findings: We present exact preoperative localization with Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) imaging. This allows a more precise resection thereby reducing surgical access trauma, loss of healthy pancreatic tissue and increasing safety and quality of the surgical intervention.

Conclusion: With the help of precise preoperative localization of insulinoma with GLP-1R imaging the surgeon is able to minimize the amount of resected healthy pancreatic tissue. We hypothesize that GLP-1R imaging will become a preoperative diagnostic tool to be used for many patients scheduled for open or laparoscopic insulinoma resection.