The epidemiology of neuroendocrine tumours. The dimension of a problem, a problem of dimension L'epidemiologia dei tumori neuroendocrini. La dimensione di un problema, un problema di dimensione

Summary Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) are rare neoplasias with a clinical mean incidence of 1 case/100,000/year. On the basis of the numerous data gathered by our General Surgery Unit over the last 14 years, it is clear that the clinical and epidemiologic dimension of the problem related to NETs cannot be immediately assessed, on the one hand because there is a prevalence of asymptomatic tumours and, on the other, because, data on the clinical incidence of the disease are, in some cases, in contrast with those of post-mortem prevalence. A particularly sensitive factor derives from the clinicians’ degree of knowledge about the issue and from the fact that neuroendocrine tumours, being rare, may arouse little interest in the scientific community, thus leading to an underestimation of the problem. Selective screening for some typical aspects of the symptomatic tumours may help to give a more realistic epidemiological picture. For this reason, it will be necessary in the future to exploit all possible resources, in order to obtain data which are more and more realistic and less and less approximate. Eur. J. Oncol., 10 (1), 55-62, 2005