Pituitary apoplexy due to thyroxine therapy in a patient with congenital hypothyroidism

Murat Tutanc1, Murat Altas, Erhan Yengil

  • 1Department of Pediatric, Faculty of Medicine, Mustafa Kemal University, Hatay, Turkey.

Acta Medica Indonesiana
|January 23, 2014
PubMed

A 24-year-old woman was admitted with general weakness, umbilical swelling, developmental delay, speech disorder, constipation, gait problem. Her findings were umbilical hernia, xerosis, dry hair, and short stature. After thyroxine treatment, she also had headache, vomiting, and palpitation, lack of appetite, and sleep disturbance. Pituitary magnetic resonance imaging revealed a heterogeneous mass at the central part of the gland on coronal section and it was interpreted as pituitary apoplexy. In the current case, the patient with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) developed pituitary apoplexy (PA) after thyroxine therapy. Therefore, it is suggested that the complaints were related to PA rather than adrenal insufficiency. Here we describe a case report evaluating PA in a patient with thyrotrophic pituitary adenoma due to CH. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case in terms of PA associated with CH after thyroxine therapy in the literature.

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