Vision loss, years of menstrual disorders, these two symptoms are due to the same root disease, ordinary people estimate it is difficult to imagine - pituitary adenoma of the brain.
Pituitary adenoma
There are three common symptoms
What is pituitary adenoma?
Pituitary adenoma is a common benign intracranial tumor, accounting for about 10% of intracranial tumors, second only to glioblastoma and meningioma.
Although it is a benign tumor, the harm of pituitary adenoma is not small.
First, excessive secretion of pituitary hormone will cause a series of metabolic disorders and organ damage; Tumor compression can also cause other pituitary hormones to be low, resulting in poor function of the corresponding target gland; The tumor compresses the structure of the sella region of the brain, such as chiasma, optic nerve, cavernous sinus, basal cerebral artery, hypothalamus, third ventricle, and even involves the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, brain stem, etc., resulting in serious impairment of the corresponding important functions of the brain.
The clinical manifestations of pituitary adenomas vary greatly depending on the type, and some even have no symptoms.
In summary, common symptoms mainly include:
- Headache:
In the early stage, about two-thirds of patients have headaches, mainly located in the retroorbital, forehead and double temporal, intermittent attacks.
When the tumor breaks through the diaphragm of the saddle, the pressure in the saddle decreases, and the pain can be alleviated or disappeared.
Late headache can be caused by the tumor invading the dural membrane of the skull base and blood vessels and pressing on the trigeminal nerve.
Tumor necrosis, bleeding, intratumor pressure increases sharply, sudden severe headache, accompanied by visual impairment and other neurological symptoms.
- Visual field impairment:
The pituitary adenoma has not compressed the optic chiasmatic nerve before, most of the visual field is not impaired.
With the growth of tumors, about 60% to 80% of patients can be affected by different parts of the visual pathway, resulting in different visual dysfunction, and the typical patients are mostly bilatemporal hemianopsia.
- Other symptoms:
Different types of functional pituitary adenomas have different clinical manifestations. Common prolactin adenomas lead to infertility due to increased prolactin and decreased estrogen. Growth hormone adenoma can cause metabolic disorders due to excessive secretion of growth hormone, resulting in a series of changes such as excessive growth of bones, soft tissues and internal organs. Before puberty, patients who have not yet fused epiphysis are manifested as gigantism, while those who have fused epiphysis in adults are manifested as acromegaly.
