Irrfan Khan diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumor: Here's everything you need to know

Amidst much speculations for the last few days, actor Irrfan Khan has confirmed that the disease he is suffering from is neuroendocrine tumor. This is a disease that affects fewer than 1 million cases per year in India.

Here's everything you need to know about neuroendocrine tumor.

Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are neoplasms that arise from cells of the endocrine and nervous systems and can be either benign or malignant.

While they most commonly occur in the intestine, they can be found in the pancreas, lung and the rest of the body as well.

The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies neuroendocrine tumors into three main categories.

These include the well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumours, which are further subdivided into tumors with benign and those with uncertain behaviour. Then there are the well-differentiated (low grade) neuroendocrine carcinomas with low-grade malignant behavior and poorly differentiated (high grade) neuroendocrine carcinomas, which are the large cell neuroendocrine and small cell carcinomas.

Symptoms for neuroendocrine tumour include flushing, diarrhea, asthma or wheezing, congestive heart failure (CHF), abdominal cramping, peripheral edema and heart palpitations.

However, the details of Irrfan’s case are still to be made public. The revelation comes after a few weeks, when he had said that he has a “rare disease” and will open up about it soon.