ORIGINAL ARTICLE   

Il Giornale Italiano di Radiologia Medica 2018 Gennaio-Febbraio;5(1):10-4

DOI: 10.23736/S2283-8376.17.00001-8

Copyright © 2017 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: Italian

Neoplastic seeding after percutaneous ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration of solid pancreatic lesions: retrospective analysis of 124 cases

Riccardo DE ROBERTIS ^{1, 2} ✉, Nicolò CARDOBI ¹, Emilio BARBI ¹, Mirko D'ONOFRIO ³

¹ Dipartimento di Diagnostica per Immagini, Casa di Cura Pederzoli, Peschiera del Garda, Verona, Italia; ² Dipartimento di Medicina, Università degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italia; ³ Istituto di Radiologia, Ospedale G.B. Rossi, Università degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italia

BACKGROUND: A possible - albeit uncommon - long-term complication of fine-needle aspiration of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is tumor seeding along the percutaneous needle track. The aims of this study were to esteem the frequency of this complication after ultrasound-guided percutaneous fine-needle aspiration and to evaluate its possible clinical impact.
METHODS: Preprocedural and follow-up CT and/or MR examinations of 124 patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma who underwent ultrasound-guided percutaneous fine-needle aspiration were retrospectively analyzed. Two radiologists independently evaluated the presence of radiological signs suggestive for tumor seeding, as the development of peritoneal or subcutaneous nodules along the presumed percutaneous track or the development of ascites without concurrent local or distant disease progression. The median follow-up after fine-needle aspiration was 197 days.
RESULTS: Most patients (82.3%) did not show any radiological sign suggestive for tumor seeding after fineneedle aspiration. Peritoneal nodules along the presumed percutaneous track were found in 1/124 case (0.8%). Ascites without any concurrent sign of disease progression was found in 7/124 cases (5.6%), after a median of 210 days after fine-needle aspiration.
CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that tumor seeding after percutaneous fine-needle aspiration of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is uncommon and that this procedure do not have any clinical impact on disease progression in patients with unresectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

KEY WORDS: Pancreas - Endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration - Cytological techniques - Carcinoma, ductal