UK and Ireland Neuroendocrine Tumour Society

About UKI NETS

The management of patients with Neuroendocrine Tumours (NETS) represents a considerable challenge, due to their relatively infrequent and diverse presentations, and the variable clinical course and response to treatment. These tumours include, but are not limited to, carcinoids.

An increasing awareness of NETS and the challenges in diagnosis and management stimulated a multi-disciplinary meeting in 2000, followed by formation of the steering committee of the UK-NETwork. For the first time this brought together a wide range of disciplines to focus on the better understanding and management of patients with these tumours, including: endocrinology, gastroenterology, oncology, surgery, radiology, nuclear medicine, genetics, pathology, and nursing.

This group has been highly successful in promoting multidisciplinary teams and clinics centred on NETS around the UK. It has interacted with individual specialist societies and runs National Conferences to promote interaction and to further clinical and scientific study.

Anyone who has attended one these meetings will be aware of the refreshing discussions that take place, the stimulation of interacting directly with others outside ones own immediate field of endocrinology, and the benefits that this brings to clinical management and ideas for new avenues of investigation. The first management guidelines were published in Gut in 2005.

There has been such a rich interaction between disciplines, and advances in diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, that UKNETwork has now been formalized into a society, The UK and Ireland Neuroendocrine Tumour Society, UKI NETS.