Cost of evaluation of patients with pituitary incidentaloma

Excerpt

Because approximately one in five individuals harbors a pituitary adenoma [1], the management of patients with incidentally discovered pituitary tumors (“incidentalomas”) is of interest. Most of these tumors are small (microadenomas <10 mm that cause no mass effect) and are hormonally inactive, leading some authors to suggest that conservative management is sufficient [3]. In fact, in many parts of the world, pituitary incidentalomas are rarely referred for specialist opinion and testing. Conservative management is routinely performed in the general medical community rather than by specialists. Nevertheless, for patients with a diagnosis of pituitary adenoma, the benefit of more aggressive monitoring is the possibility of definitively treating the small tumor as it becomes symptomatic, and before it progresses to a larger tumor resulting in more significant endocrinopathy or optic neuropathy. …