Medical Case Reports

Robotic-Assisted Distal Pancreatectomy for a Pancreatic Desmoid Tumor: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Introduction: Desmoid tumors are rare, indolent tumors of mesenchymal origin, with a potential for local invasion and adjacent organ involvement, without a metastatic potential. Pancreatic desmoid tumors are defined as tumors involving the pancreas parenchyma, sparing adjacent organs, and requiring a pancreatectomy for adequate surgical resection.

Case presentation: We report a case of a lesser sac heterogeneous solid tumor involving the pancreatic tail in a 69-year-old man without a known genetic predisposition. Treatment consisted of a robotic-assisted distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy due to the intimate anatomical association of the mass to the pancreatic parenchyma and splenic vessels. The mass was found to be a desmoid-type fibromatosis on pathological assessment.

Discussion: Surgical resection with adequate margins remains the gold curative standard for desmoid-type fibromatosis tumors of the abdomen and retroperitoneum. Pancreatic desmoid tumors tend to be sporadic, occur equally among genders, most commonly involving the distal body and tail of the pancreas, requiring a distal pancreatectomy for adequate surgical margins.

Conclusion: We report in this article the twenty first case of a pancreatic desmoid tumor in the literature and the first report of a robotic-assisted resection of this tumor.

Author(s):

George Younan, Kiyoko Oshima, Darren D Ballard and Kathleen K Christians

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