Spiral CT appearances of pancreatic tail insulinoma

Introduction: Insulinomas are the most common category of pancreatic endocrine tumors, with an incidence of 1-7 cases per million people.

Material and Methods: Most are intrapancreatic, benign and solitary. Therefore, they have an excellent prognosis after surgical resection. However, the localization diagnosis of insulinomas still poses a challenge to surgeons and radiologists.

Results: We present two cases showing classical appearances on helical CT In these two cases the tumors were occult and could not be found by either abdominal enhanced spiral computed tomography (CT) or ultrasonography. We would like to emphasize the need for performing helical CT whenever the diagnosis is suspected, due to the ability to image the pancreas in the early arterial as well as in the equilibrium phase.

Conclusions: We reminded of surgeons that insulinomas represent the most frequently found functioning endocrine tumors .Therefore, they have an excellent prognosis after surgical resection. However, the localization diagnosis of insulinomas still poses a challenge to surgeons and radiologists.