The symptoms of pituitary adenoma vary between men and women, and are mostly “gender-specific”, such as menopause, lactation, infertility, reduced menstrual flow, and breast swelling in women, and impotence, lack of libido, lack of beard, thinning of the voice, and feminine skin in men. Therefore, pituitary adenoma is often misdiagnosed and mistreated.
Neurosurgeons introduce that many female patients turn to obstetrics and gynecology for treatment due to amenorrhea, infertility, and irregular menstruation, and they often undergo many tests and take many drugs, and when they are finally diagnosed with pituitary adenoma in neurosurgery, they often miss the best time for treatment. In some cases, male patients take kidney tonics and aphrodisiacs because of impotence and decreased sexual function, but the more they take them, the worse they get, and when they finally go to neurosurgery for vision loss, they often have an average history of 3-4 years of decreased sexual function.
Early detection of pituitary adenoma is especially important, and if surgery is performed before the tumor compresses the optic nerve and causes vision loss, along with follow-up, very good results can be achieved, and even complete cure can be achieved.
Benign pituitary adenoma troubled male and queen lady in their 30s, married for five or six years, never got pregnant, the couple visited the hospital many times and used some oral medications, but nothing worked. When they saw that their friends and colleagues around them were having children and they were not moving at all, the relationship between the two began to have a crisis. One day, two people argued over trivial matters, Ms. Wang suddenly felt a splitting headache, eyes do not see things clearly, at first thought that is angry, liver fire up caused by lying down to rest for a while will be good, but after half a day symptoms are not relieved, and nausea, vomiting up. Ms. Wang’s lover then felt bad, rushed his wife to the hospital. The cranial CT and Mri tests showed that Wang had a pituitary adenoma in the saddle area of her skull, which was the cause of her infertility.
Pituitary adenoma is a common benign tumor, accounting for about 10% to 20% of intracranial tumors. Malignant pituitary adenomas are extremely rare. Pituitary adenomas are more common in young adults and can cause serious damage to patients’ growth, development, labor ability and reproductive function, as well as cause a series of psychosocial effects, so pituitary adenomas are more dangerous to human physical and mental health than other intracranial tumors.
Symptoms of pituitary adenoma: Hypogonadism It is documented that about 60% of pituitary adenoma patients have sexual dysfunction, but the actual situation is much higher than this number, and some people are often reluctant to talk about it. Hypogonadism refers to impotence and decreased libido. Men who do not have intercourse with their wives for any length of time do not ask for it, and only occasionally have sex when their wives ask for it.
Pituitary adenoma causes hypogonadism: pituitary adenoma causes hypogonadism due to compression of normal pituitary tissue and damage from radiotherapy, which affects the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis in the body, resulting in insufficient secretion of gonadotropin, further leading to hypogonadism; thyrotropin adenoma causes hypothyroidism and slow metabolism in the body, so that the metabolism of estrogen and androgen in the body decreases with The lack of thyroxine reduces the metabolism of estrogen and androgen in the body; obesity caused by adrenocorticotropic and growth hormone pituitary adenomas is also a cause of hypogonadism.
About 2/3 of patients have headache in the early stage. The pain is mainly located behind the orbits, in the forehead and near the temples bilaterally, and is mild and intermittent. When the tumor grows upward and breaks through the saddle septum, the intra-saddle pressure decreases and the pain decreases or disappears. Patients often feel a sudden severe headache followed by a significant reduction or relief of pain, but if left untreated, the pain will appear again as the tumor grows.
The pituitary adenoma in the saddle can break through the saddle base and grow downward, and invade the important blood vessels and nerves in the skull to both sides, but the most common way of growth is to develop up the saddle and compress the optic cross and optic nerve, causing vision loss and visual field defects. Patients often complain of vision loss, not being able to see both sides, and always hitting the door.
Changes in face, limbs and body shape Growth hormone pituitary adenoma causes excessive growth of limbs, muscles and internal organs due to excessive secretion of growth hormone. In adolescence, before the epiphysis fuses, pituitary adenomas appear as gigantism, and in adults, they appear as large hands and feet (gradually increasing shoe size), broad head and face, high cheekbones, enlarged nose, thickened lips, loose, coarse and dark skin, increased hair, hoarseness, sleep snoring and sleep apnea syndrome.
Surgery should be the preferred treatment for pituitary adenoma. There are three main treatments for pituitary adenoma: surgery, radiotherapy and drugs. Pituitary adenoma should be treated systematically and individually. The so-called systemic individualized treatment refers to the adoption of different surgical methods, drug treatment, gamma knife treatment or general radiotherapy, or a combination of two or three treatment methods for different pituitary adenoma types, tumor size, hormone levels, age and other factors, as well as long-term follow-up and monitoring, and timely adjustment of drug dosage and treatment plan.
Surgical resection is currently recognized as the first choice for pituitary adenoma treatment. For tumors that cannot be surgically removed at once, postoperative treatment can be supplemented with radiotherapy or gamma knife. Due to the high recurrence rate of pituitary adenoma, it was thought that postoperative radiotherapy should be given to pituitary adenoma in the past. Nowadays, due to the improvement of surgical techniques, methods and equipment, pituitary adenoma can be fully resected under microscope, and radiotherapy can lead to low pituitary function, so radiotherapy is not advocated, but regular observation and follow-up.