Pituitary adenoma. Preoperative symptomatology in a series of 260 patients.

STUDY of the syndromes associated with pituitary adenoma began with the description of acromegaly by Marie (1886), and many reports of the symptomatology of the tumour have since appeared (Cushing, 1912; Cairns, 1935; Henderson, 1939; Jefferson, 1940; Bakay, 1950; Younghusband, Horrax, Hurxthal, Hare, and Poppen, 1952; Nurnberger and Korey, 1953; Mogensen, 1957; Ray and Patterson, 1962; Poppen, 1963). Recently a series of 260 patients with pituitary adenoma selected for combined surgery and radiotherapy because of failing vision has been studied. Both the effect of treatment on vision (Elkington and McKissock, 1967) and the subsequent endocrine function (Elkington, Buckell, Monamy, and Jenkins, 1967) have been described elsewhere. The present communication reports the pre-operative symptomatology in these patients and suggests how early diagnosis of pituitary adenoma, necessary if the best results are to be obtained from treatment, may be made on clinical grounds.