Endocrine Abstracts

Following seminal observations published nearly 20 years ago, it is apparent, increasingly, that patients with pituitary disease have excess mortality due to cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and respiratory causes; with women having a worse outcome than men. Patients with craniopharygioma have the greatest risk. There does not appear to be an overall excess of death due to malignancy. Despite large retrospective and prospective database cohort analyses, the precise reasons for ...

Several reports indicate that hypopituitarism is associated with decreased life expectancy compared to age-matched healthy controls and that this mortality penalty exists despite ‘adequate’ or ‘satisfactory’ replacement with glucocorticoids, thyroid hormone and sex steroids. Almost coincident with these studies came a series of randomised, placebo-controlled trials, in which it was convincingly demonstrated that treatment of growth hormone deficient (GHD) a...

Craniopharyngiomas are rare, sellar/parasellar tumours diagnosed during childhood or adult life.Despite their benign histological appearance, they are associated with substantial morbidity (endocrine, visual, hypothalamic, as well as neurobehavioural and cognitive) compromising psychosocial integration, quality of life and survival. These complications are the result of the damage by the primary (they tend to be large lesions, most of which with signific...

External beam radiotherapy has been used in the management of hormonally active and non-functioning pituitary adenomas for nearly a century. Administered postoperatively, radiotherapy significantly reduces the likelihood of tumour re-growth following surgery for non-functioning pituitary adenomas. In patients with acromegaly, Cushing’s disease and resistant prolactinomas, conventional fractionated radiotherapy suppresses functional hypersecretion. However, over the years,...