1. Pituitary tumors are benign endocrine tumors of the skull. This tumor originates from the anterior pituitary cells, so pituitary tumors originate in the saddle (the “residence” of the normal pituitary gland).
Pituitary tumors are very common tumors, and the term “incidental tumor” has been frequently used in the literature recently, i.e., a pituitary tumor is found incidentally when a patient undergoes cranial imaging for other reasons, but it is not clear what the probability is. One group collected 100 healthy adult volunteers for cranial MRI and found that about 10% of them had suspicious pituitary tumors. In addition, the percentage of pituitary tumors less than 1cm found in autopsy specimens was up to 27% in the normal population, so pituitary tumors are not terrible.
3.Prevalence and incidence of pituitary tumors So how many pituitary tumors with clinical symptoms are there? In China, there is no epidemiological data on the prevalence and incidence of pituitary tumors in large numbers. Foreign data on this subject show that the prevalence and incidence statistics of pituitary disease vary considerably between countries and regions. This may be related to differences in diagnostic methods and inconsistencies in the methods used by investigators. In the United States, 2500 patients with definite pituitary tumors are diagnosed each year, with an annual incidence rate of 1 per 100,000, while the annual incidence rates in Europe and Japan seem to be higher than those in the United States, 1, 5 per 100,000 and 1, 8 per 100,000 respectively. If we refer to the annual incidence rate of neighboring Japan, the annual incidence rate of our six provinces and one city in East China is 35,829,000, and the annual incidence rate is 6,449 cases, which is such an amazing number!
4.Difference in the incidence of pituitary tumor Pituitary tumor can occur at any age and there is no gender difference. But why is the number of pituitary tumors found clinically increasing year by year, and the incidence rate varies greatly among different age groups and different genders?
(1) Medical imaging development. Before the introduction of CT and MRI, patients often had severe visual impairment to be diagnosed due to the lack of diagnostic tools. In the last 20 years, with the widespread use of CT and MRI, many microadenomas have been diagnosed clearly.
(2) The incidence is higher in women of childbearing age than in men of the same age group. The first symptom of pituitary tumors is endocrine disorders, mostly gonadal dysfunction, so women will be more significant in terms of menstrual cycle alterations and will be seen for this reason. Male patients are usually less concerned about declining sexual function or are ashamed to talk about it, so that the incidence is of course higher in women than in men, e.g. the common pituitary PRL adenoma, mostly seen in the 18-40 age group, is more than twice as common in women than in men.
(3) The incidence is lower in children and the elderly. The first symptom in the elderly is usually vision loss, and the diameter of the tumor is usually greater than 2 cm before it can compress the optic nerve, plus the visual changes in elderly patients are easily confused with common diseases such as cataract and glaucoma, so there are few misdiagnosis and omission, so the number of elderly pituitary tumor patients is relatively small, accounting for only 2% of patients over 65 years old. The age of onset of PRL adenomas is older, and non-functional adenomas are rare, also because of the endocrine changes associated with each age group during childhood. GH tumors in adolescence can lead to rapid growth and gigantism, while PRL adenomas in children mostly occur in females and are related to the timing of secondary sex characteristics development.
5, pituitary tumor treatment effect More than 90% of pituitary tumor patients who develop pituitary tumor are pituitary microadenoma.