Pituitary Tumors: Introduction

00:00 So how should we think about pituitary tumors? And what should you know? Well, there's two tumors that occur in the sellar or parasellar region.

00:10 And that's pituitary tumors like we see for this patient, and craniopharyngiomas.

00:15 These are the most common tumors and the ones that you should think about, for patients or clinical vignettes.

00:21 How the patients present? Well, they can present in two ways.

00:25 from compression of surrounding structures, either the pituitary gland or the optic chiasm, which is closely approximated to this region, or from secretion of hormones in excess hormonal function.

00:40 Two-thirds of pituitary adenomas are functional, they're hormones secreting.

00:44 And prolactinoma are the most common, and the other third will present from local compression of surrounding structures.

00:52 How do we treat hormone secreting tumors and specifically prolactinomas? Well in this patient we've heard about Bromocriptine or cabergoline, those are dopamine agonists that can treat prolactinomas.

01:04 For other types of tumors, like those secreting growth hormone, we're going to learn about Octreotide, for tumors that secrete ACTH or create Cushing's disease, which we'll talk about Pasireotide is going to be a treatment of choice And these hormonal treatments are important to consider in these patients.