Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012:2012:147465.
doi: 10.1155/2012/147465. Epub 2011 Oct 11.

Epidemiology, diagnosis, and management of cystic lesions of the pancreas

Koen de Jong  1 , Marco J Bruno, Paul Fockens
Affiliations

Epidemiology, diagnosis, and management of cystic lesions of the pancreas

Koen de Jong et al. Gastroenterol Res Pract. 2012.

Abstract

Although little is known on the true prevalence of pancreatic cysts, physicians are currently more frequently confronted with pancreatic cysts because of the increasing use of sophisticated cross-sectional abdominal imaging. Cystic lesions of the pancreas comprise of a heterogeneous group of diagnostic entities, some of which are benign such as inflammatory pseudocysts or serous cystadenomas and do not require resection when asymptomatic. Others like mucinous cysts or intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMN) have a malignant potential and in these cases surgical resection is often indicated. For this reason an adequate distinction between the various cysts is crucial to optimize management strategy. Different diagnostic methods that could be of value in the differentiation include radiologic imaging techniques such as CT, MR, and endosonography. In addition, fluid aspiration for cytopathology, tumormarkers or molecular analysis is widely used. Different guidelines are available but so far no optimal diagnostic algorithm exists. We summarize the epidemiology, classification, clinical presentation, diagnostics, management, and future perspectives.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Prevalence of pancreatic cysts in relation to increasing age.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Cystic lesion in the pancreatic head is punctured using a linear array echo-endoscope.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) EUS image of a malignant IPMN in the head of the pancreas. (b) MRI image of a malignant IPMN in the head of the pancreas.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) EUS image of a serous cystadenoma in the head of the pancreas. (b) MRI image of a serous cystadenoma in the head of the pancreas.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. de Jong K, Nio CY, Hermans JJ, et al. High prevalence of pancreatic cysts detected by screening magnetic resonance imaging examinations. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. 2010;8(9):806–811. - PubMed
    1. Laffan TA, Horton KM, Klein AP, et al. Prevalence of unsuspected pancreatic cysts on MDCT. American Journal of Roentgenology. 2008;191(3):802–807. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lee KS, Sekhar A, Rofsky NM, Pedrosa I. Prevalence of incidental pancreatic cysts in the adult population on MR imaging. American Journal of Gastroenterology. 2010;105(9):2079–2084. - PubMed
    1. Spinelli KS, Fromwiller TE, Daniel RA, et al. Cystic pancreatic neoplasms: observe or operate. Annals of Surgery. 2004;239(5):651–659. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zhang XM, Mitchell DG, Dohke M, Holland GA, Parker L. Pancreatic cysts: depiction on single-shot fast spin-echo MR images. Radiology. 2002;223(2):547–553. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources