Endocrine Abstracts

Background and aims: Pheochromocytomas arise from chromaffin cells of adrenal medulla and sympathetic ganglia. It occurs in about 0.05 to 0.1% of patients with sustained hypertension. It is considered that about half the patients with pheochromocytoma have only paroxysmal hypertension. Pheochromocytoma is usually suggested by the history in a symptomatic patient, discovery of an incidental adrenal mass, or the family history in a patient with familial disease. We retrospectively analyzed all patients with pheochromocytoma for last 10 years.

Cases: Patients with pheochromcytoma (n: 35) who had data available for complete analysis were enrolled. All patients were evaluated in terms of complaints, age, sex, tumor localization, tumor origin, tumor size, recurrence and presence of MEN syndrome.

Results: Twenty-six patients (74.3%) had adrenal incidentaloma and remaining nine patients (25.7%) were symptomatic hypertensive. The average age at diagnosis was 48.54 (±15.47) years. Twenty-two (62.9%) patients were female and 13 patients were male (37.1%). Two patients (5.7%) had paraganglioma, remaining 33 patients had adrenal localization (94.3%). We diagnosed composite tumor (pheochromocytoma and ganglioneuroma) in two patients. In the majority of patients tumor was right adrenal localization (18 patients, 54.5%). On the other hand, 12 patients (36.6%) had left adrenal localization and three patients (9%) had bilateral pheochromocytoma. Medullary thyroid cancer (MEN 2) were determined in five patients (14.2%). Of five patients with MEN syndrome four patients were female. Mean tumor size was 6.36±3.11 cm. We determined recurrence in 5 female, 1 male, total six patients (17%). From the patients with recurrent, 2 female patients had also MEN two syndrome.

Conclusions: Our patients had female predominance. Majority of patients were admitted with adrenal incidentaloma. Increased use of radiographic imaging may be responsible for this result. Lots of adrenal masses were located in right adrenal gland. And average tumor size was larger than previously reported cases.