Gene K., David S. Goldberg, Nikhil Thiruvengadam, Vinay Chandrasekhara, Michael L. Kochman, Gregory G. Ginsberg, Charles M. Vollmer, Nuzhat A. Ahmad

In 2015 the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) published guidelines to provide recommendations for management of suspected pancreatic cystic neoplasms (PCNs). The aim of this study is to compare efficacy of these to the Fukuoka consensus guidelines in predicting advanced neoplasia (AN) in patients with suspected PCNs. We performed a retrospective study of 239 patients who underwent surgical resection for suspected mucinous PCN at a tertiary care center from 2000-2014. Surgical pathology was the gold standard. The AGA and Fukuoka criteria were applied, and their performance in predicting AN, defined as invasive cancer or high-grade dysplasia (HGD), was assessed. AN was found in 71/239 (29.7%) patients (28 invasive cancer, 43 HGD). The Fukuoka "high-risk" (FG-HR) and AGA "high-risk" (AGA-HR) criteria identified patients with AN with sensitivity of 28.2% and 35.2%, specificity of 95.8% and 94.0%, positive predictive value of 74.1% and 71.4%, and negative predictive value of 75.9% and 77.5%, respectively. Overall, there was no significant difference between the guidelines for prediction of AN. There were 7 and 6 cases with invasive cancer, and 23 and 24 cases with HGD missed by the FG-HR and AGA-HR guidelines, respectively. In a retrospective analysis, the AGA guidelines are not superior to the Fukuoka guidelines in identifying AN in suspected PCNs. Both sets of guidelines have fair PPV for detection of AN, which would lead to avoidable resections in patients without AN. Additionally, the high-risk features of both guidelines do not accurately identify all patients with AN.