Endocrine Abstracts

The increased morbidity and mortality of acromegaly makes early diagnosis and therapy critical. Long term follow-up and investigating comorbidities of this disease is also important. We present here retrospective results of 70 patients. There were 41 female, 29 male patient included in the study. Follow-up period was longer than 5 years. Fifty-nine of the patients were macroadenoma, 4 of them were empty sella, 7 of them were microadenoma. Seven patients refused surgical treatment and they were followed only with medical treatment. Sixty-three patients were treated with surgical and medical treatment. Transsphenoidal surgery was the treatment of choice. For the patients whose macroadenomas were not controlled by surgery alone (22 patients), radiation therapy was applied after surgical and medical treatment for the residual tumor (7 gamma-knife, 10 conventional, 5 cyber-knife). One patient was operated sucessfully when she was 75 years old and there was no complication. In 1 patient acromegaly was a clinical component of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1, 2 patients had fibrous dysplasia. Renal transplantation was applied to one patient because of diabetic nephropathy. One patient had a successful pregnancy period after she was diagnosed as acromegaly and she has a healthy child. Octreotid treatment was stopped during pregnancy. Malignancy was diagnosed in 5 patients (1 pancreas adenocarcinoma, 2 thyroid follicular carcinoma, 1 lung adenocarcinoma, 1 colon adenocarcinoma and thyroid papillary carcinoma coexistent in the same patient). Colonic polyps were discovered in 7 patients. As a result it can be concluded that acromegalic patiens have to be followed lifelong. Usually remission is not achieved easily. The patients should also be investigated for other comorbidities.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.