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MUMBAI: Exactly 10 days after tweeting that he suffered from a rare disease, noted actor Irrfan Khan announced on social media that he has ( NET ).While local doctors said not all neuroendocrine tumours turn out be cancerous, Khan indicated in his tweet that he would “fly out” for treatment. “Learning that I have been diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumour as of now has admittedly been difficult, but the love and strength of those around me and that I found within me has brought me to a place of hope,” said the actor in his statement released on Friday.Doctors said NETs may not be cancerous at all or these could be so slow growing as to not affect one’s daily life. The condition is more often than not easy to treat. As the name suggests, NETs emerge in the endocrine glands that secrete hormones, right from insulin to oxytocin. The knowledge of NETs became common when Apple founder Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic NET in 2003. He passed away in 2011.NETs are so rare that Parel’s Tata Memorial Hospital , the country’s busiest centre that registers 65,000 cases every year, gets an average of 100-140 cases at its NET clinic every year. A decade ago, the institute would see a handful of cases, but the numbers have climbed in recent years with improving diagnostic facilities.“Neuroendocrine tumours are rare the world over. Even with our 1.2 billon population, it is rare. But India would still see more cases than the rest of the world again because of our population,” said Dr Shailesh Shrikhande of Tata Hospital.Experts said Khan did well in waiting to announce his final diagnosis—mainly because it is an ill-understood disease. “The tumours are mostly incidental findings, not related to the original diagnostic inquiry. But, it’s also one of the indolent and better behaving tumours. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that the treatment outcome of a tumour in preliminary stages that has spread may be better than a high grade tumour that is localized,” said Shrikhande.Medical oncologist Dr Kumar Prabash from Tata Memorial Hospital said, “NETs should be looked as a spectrum of conditions. They could be tumours or cancerous. Many of them grow slowly while some others are aggressive.”In a paper published in the Indian Journal of Gastroenterology's December 2017 edition, onco surgeons Dr Jagannath Palepu and Dr Shailesh V Shrikhande looked at 407 Gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (GEP-NET) cases registered over the last 15 years.Their study found that the most common site of primary tumour was the pancreas while liver was the rarest.Dr Akshay Shah of SL Raheja-Fortis Hospital, said, “NET is a very broad term used for tumours arising from neural and endocrine tissues. It is a contradiction and requires a high index of suspicion to diagnose.”