Surgical complications after transsphenoidal microscopic and endoscopic surgery for pituitary adenoma: a consecutive...

This single-institution, consecutive series of transsphenoidal procedures included all patients in a defined population of 2.6 million inhabitants who underwent surgery during a specific time period.

We sought to determine the surgical complication rate and overall survival rate after transsphenoidal surgery for pituitary adenoma.

All transsphenoidal procedures for histologically verified pituitary adenomas performed between September 2002 and February 2011 at our institution were included in this study. The data were obtained from a prospectively collected database and from reviewing medical records. No patients were lost to follow-up, and the median follow-up time was 28 months.

A total of 506 transsphenoidal procedures were performed on 446 patients. There were 268 microscopic and 238 endoscopic procedures involving 352 non-functioning and 154 hormone-secreting adenomas. A total of 73% of the procedures were primary surgeries, and 27% were repeat surgeries for tumor recurrence. The overall complication rate was 9.1%. The three most frequent complications were cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage (4.7%), meningitis (2%), and visual deterioration (2%). Multivariate analyses showed that the overall risk for complications increased with older age, surgery for recurrent tumors, and surgery performed by a low-volume surgeon. There was no significant difference in the overall complication rate between the microsurgical and endoscopic techniques. The rate of surgical mortality was 0.6%, and the overall survival rates at 1 and 5 years were 95% and 90%, respectively. The only negative predictor of survival was older age.

Transsphenoidal surgery for pituitary adenomas has a low complication rate and a low rate of mortality. We did not find a significant difference in the complication rate between endoscopic and microscopic techniques.