Radiation therapy outcomes of patients with pituitary macroadenoma

Pituitary adenomas are one of the most common benign intracranial tumors, which are normally treated with surgery along with radiation therapy and medication such as dopamine agonist in prolactinoma. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the outcome of patients with pituitary macroadenoma who underwent radiation therapy. For the present retrospective study, a total of 75 patients with pituitary macroadenoma who received radiation therapy were included. Data was acquired from the electronic medical record system of the hospital. Mean ± standard deviation of the quantitative variables, such as age and sizes of the tumors, were reported. In addition, frequencies and percentages were presented for all categorical variables. To compare the frequency distribution in radiation therapy characteristics between functional and non-functional tumors, the χ² test or Fisher's exact test was applied, where appropriate. Kaplan-Meier survival curve was drawn to assess the progression free survival proportion. P≤0.05 was considered to indicate a statistically significant difference. In the present study, all patients (n=75) with pituitary macroadenoma were treated with radiation therapy (RT). The mean age was 38.55±1.36 years and the majority of the patients were male (43; 57.3%). The mean tumor size was 3.84±1.43 cm. In total, 66.7% were non-functional tumors whereas 33.3% were functional tumors that produce hormones in excess [growth hormone (72%), prolactin (16%), both growth hormone and prolactin (8%) and adrenocorticotropic hormone (4%)]. The overall outcome was revealed to be 92% achieving local tumor control and 28% achieving biochemical control. Hypopituitarism (38.7%) and visual acuity deterioration (9.3%) were the most common complications observed following RT. The overall progression-free survival at 2 years was 92%. In conclusion, the data of the present study suggested that local tumor control in non-functional and functional pituitary macroadenoma can be well managed with RT. However, biochemical control to normalize hormones overproduction in functional pituitary macroadenoma was not as effective as local tumor control.