Frequency and Characterization of Benign Lesions in Patients Undergoing Surgery for the Suspicion of Solid Pancreatic Neoplasm

A diagnosis of benign lesions (BLs) is reported in 5% to 21% of pancreatoduodenectomies performed for neoplasms; no data for body-tail resections are available. The aims were to investigate the frequency and characterize the BLs mimicking cancer in the head and the body-tail of the pancreas.This study is a retrospective review of pancreatic specimenscollected from 2005 to 2011 in the pathology database of Mainz (Germany). Patients with final diagnosis excluding malignancy were analyzed by histology, imaging, and clinical aspects.Among 373 patients, 33 patients (8.8%) were diagnosed with a benign disease: 25 (8.4%) of 298 in the pancreatic head and 8 (10.7%) of 75 in the body-tail resections…