Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction and objective: Clinically nonfunctional pituitary adenomas are relatively an uncommon disease. The aim of this work is to describe the clinical characteristics and to review the results of transsphenoidal surgery (TS) of pituitary adenomas in a reference centre.

Methods: A retrospective study (1995–2014) of 66 patients (50% men) diagnosed with pituitary adenomas by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was conducted. demographic, clinical, biochemical data and the results of TS were collected. For statistical processing program SPSS version 22.0 was used.

Results: The mean age of the patients was 57±16’8 years. The most frequent clinical presentations were as an incidental pituitary mass (34.8%) and visual symptoms (36.4%). The mean size of the sellar tumour was 26.6±8.8 mm. A 59% of them had pathological visual field testing (34.8% bitemporal hemianopsia). Some hormone deficiency was found in 66.7% of patients before surgery (16.7% of them presented panhypopituitarism). 52 out of 66 were referred for surgery, 49 because of the optic chiasm compression and three due to pituitary apoplexy. The mean size of the tumour was 28.55 mm in those who underwent surgery Vs 20.1 mm in nonsurgical patients (P<0.001). Transsphenoidal approach was used in all patients (endoscope visualisation in 13/52). 12 months after the surgery, 50% had no tumour image on MRI. Some hormone deficiency was detected in 90.4% (38.5% of whom had panhypopituitarism) and the visual field deficits improved in 30%. Nine out of 52 patients required a second surgery and 11/52 received radiotherapy due to residual mass.

Conclusion: Considering tumour size results they are similar to those reported in the literature but with a higher risk of hypopituitarism.