Endocrine Abstracts

The objective of the research was to study the prevalence of adrenal tumors in various age groups.

Materials and methods: Clinical observation of 282 patients with various adrenal tumors. Among the examined patients there were more women 169(59.9%), with 113 (40.1%) men. The age of patients at the moment of the first application to a doctor varied from 4 months to 74 years old, with average 39.8 ± 15.7 years old. Average age of men was 37.4 ± 16.7 years old, and average age for women was 41.4 ± 14.9 years old. According to WHO age classification presented in 2017 the age under 45 is considered to be young. In relation to that, we distributed the patients to two groups, where we compared clinical case parameters. The first group included 178(63.2%) patients under 45, while the second group involved 104(36.8%) patients ≥45 years old. All patients with adrenal tumors had common clinical, biochemical, hormonal, and instrumental tests.

Results: Adrenal tumors were presented by the following nosological forms: 45(16%) cortisol-secreting tumors, 51(18.1%) pheochromocytoma,16(5.6%) aldosterone-secreting adenoma, 9(3.2%) androgen-secreting tumors, 5(1.8%) adrenal cortical cancer, 11(3.9%) adrenal metastases, and 145(51.4%) incidentaloma. Basic clinical manifestation at the moment of application was arterial hypertension (AH), which was observed in 218 (77.3%) patients and had various expression degrees. Cases of adrenal tumors with increased arterial pressure (AP) did not depend on the age. The average age at the moment of AP rise in the group of patients under 45 was 28.2 ± 8.5 years old, and in the group of ≥45 years old it was 50.0 ± 9.4 years old. Debut of the disease in the group of patients under 45 differed by its sudden start (9.6%), with development of early complications of AH (3.3%). In the group of patients under 45 prevalent duration of AH was less than 5 years, while in the group of patients ≥45 the duration of AH was 5 years and more.

Conclusion: Prevailing majority of patients (55.3%) with adrenal tumors were young at their 18–44 years, in other words in their active workable period, which in its turn, conditions early invalidation and pre-term lethality of the patients in any workability age. In the group of patients under 45 there were more often hormonal active tumors, such as pheochromocytoma (19.1%), cortisol-secreting tumors (23.6%), aldosterone-secreting adenomas (6.2%), androgen-secreting tumors (5.1%), while in the patients of ≥45 years’ old there were more incidentalomas (66.4%), metastases (7.7%), and adrenal cortical cancer (2.9%).