Endocrine Abstracts

The treatment of craniopharyngiomas is associated with long-term morbidity. Although histological benign, intrinsic aggressive biological properties of craniopharyngioma, such as invasion of surrounding tissues, apparently preclude an indolent course. Cardio- and cerebrovascular mortality risk in craniopharyngioma patients is approximately three fold increased. This risk seems to be even greater in estrogen-deficient premenopausal women. In addition, there is a high prevalence...

Background: Adult craniopharyngioma (CP) patients without GH therapy exhibit high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality with a higher risk in women than in men. Approximately 50% of children treated for CP are obese at follow-up and hypothalamic damage seems to be a major cause. In GHD CP children GH treatment improves linear growth but does not ameliorate weight gain, but the impact of long-term GH therapy into adulthood is presently unknown.<p class="abstex...

Surgery is the first-line treatment of patients with clinically non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFA). Because of lack of clinical syndrome these tumours are diagnosed with a variable delay when patients suffer from compression symptoms (hypopituitarism, headache, visual field defects) due to the extension of the tumour outside the pituitary fossa. Surgery is followed by residual tumour tissue in most patients. In these cases, radiotherapy is generally used to prevent tumou...

Pituitary tumours have recently been shown to have a prevalence of around one in a 1000, but the overwhelming majority of these are benign and readily treated. Nevertheless, while the initial therapy of the majority of non-secreting macroadenomas is transsphenoidal surgery, these have a tendency to recur even when apparently totally removed. Recurrence seems not to depend on dural invasion, and it cannot at present be predicted by any histopathological markers. Indeed, some 50...