Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Acromegaly increases cancer risk. We aimed to determine the prevalence and the predictors of tumors in acromegalic patients treated at our department.

Design: We retrospectively evaluated 142 acromegalic patients (75 females (mean age 52.1±10.4 years and 67 males (mean age 49.4±12.7 years)) treated at university center, endocrinology outpatient clinic between 1990 and 2012, with a mean follow up period of 7.5±5.9 years. The patients were screened with colonoscopy, mammography, thyroid and prostate ultrasonography.

Results: Malignancy was found in 31 (21.8%) patients. No significant difference was observed in the distribution of malignancy among sexes (20.0% in females vs 23.9% in males). Thyroid cancer was the most frequent (n=15, 10.6%) followed by the breast cancer (n=4, 2.8%) and colorectal cancer (n=4, 2.8%). Renal cell cancer in two patients, oddi tumor in one, rectal carcinoid tumor in one, bladder cancer in one, malignant melanoma in one, prostate cancer in one, lung cancer in one, parotid mucoepidermoid carcinoma in one and malign mesenchymal tumor in brain in one patient were detected. One patient had both thyroid and renal cell cancer. The patients with cancer were significantly older than the patients without cancer and age of patients at diagnosis of acromegaly was significantly higher in patients with cancer (45.8±9.9 vs 40.7±11.6 years, P<0.05). No significant difference was found in duration of the disease, initial GH levels, the prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia and treatment modalities between the patients with/without cancer.

Conclusion: The risk of cancer in acromegaly especially the thyroid cancer risk seems to be more increased than known in the literature. Therefore, acromegaly patients should be screened routinely for cancer, especially for thyroid cancer due to it being up to three times higher prevalence than breast and colorectal cancer.