Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Feb 14, 2015; 21(6): 1945-1955
Published online Feb 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i6.1945
Gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumors treated with high dose octreotide-LAR: A systematic literature review
Michael S Broder, David Beenhouwer, Jonathan R Strosberg, Maureen P Neary, Dasha Cherepanov
Michael S Broder, David Beenhouwer, Dasha Cherepanov, Partnership for Health Analytic Research, LLC, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, United States
Jonathan R Strosberg, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, FL 33612, United States
Maureen P Neary, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, East Hanover, NJ 07936, United States
Author contributions: Broder MS and Cherepanov D contributed substantially to conception, design, management of the study, interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript, revising the manuscript critically for significant intellectual content; Beenhouwer D contributed substantially to conception, design, interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript or revising it critically for significant intellectual content, performed the search and abstraction of studies; Strosberg JR contributed substantially to interpretation of data, revising the manuscript critically for significant intellectual content; Neary MP contributed substantially to conception, interpretation of data, revision of the manuscript; all authors approved the final manuscript.
Supported by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, One Health Plaza, East Hanover, NJ 07936-1080, United States.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Michael S Broder, MD, MSHS, Partnership for Health Analytic Research, LLC, 280 South Beverly Drive, Suite 404, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, United States. mbroder@pharllc.com
Telephone: +1-310-8589555 Fax: +1-310-8589552
Received: March 26, 2014
Peer-review started: March 26, 2014
First decision: April 28, 2014
Revised: July 31, 2014
Accepted: September 18, 2014
Article in press: September 19, 2014
Published online: February 14, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: Although octreotide-long-acting repeatable (LAR) is Food and Drug Administration approved for alleviating severe diarrhea/flushing associated with metastatic carcinoid tumors at doses ≤ 30 mg every 4 wk, our review found that several studies within the published literature described the use of above-label doses of octreotide-LAR for symptom and tumor control of neuroendocrine tumors. Expert clinical opinion, as reported in this review, supports escalation of somatostatin analogs for patients with refractory hormonal symptoms.