Pituitary gland is an uncommon site of metastasis for malignancies. However, breast cancer is the most common primary metastasizing to hypophysis in women. It may cause hormonal problems in different patterns due to mass affect and invasion to pituitary gland. We present a 53-year-old woman with HER-2 positive breast cancer presenting with intermittent symptoms of diabetes insipidus and rapidly...

Pituitary carcinoma is a rare malignancy and is difficult to manage. Pituitary carcinomas commonly produce either PRL or ACTH, but some do not produce pituitary hormones. The alkylating reagent temozolomide (TMZ) was recently shown to be effective as a treatment for pituitary carcinoma. Most of the published reports of TMZ use in pituitary carcinoma cases were against hormone-producing carcinom...

Isolated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism is characterized by impaired gonadotropin release in the context of normal anatomical and functional anterior pituitary function. The conditions usually responsible for hypogonadotropic hypogonadism are: pituitary adenoma, neoplastic metastasis, granulomatous processes, lymphocitary hypophysitis, histiocytosis X, hemochromatosis, vascular pathologies. We p...

by the tumor mass, such as anterior pituitary dysfunctions, visual field alterations, cephalalgia and ophthalmoplegia, the last two present in this patient. The association of ophthalmoplegia and cephalalgia is described as a sign of probable metastasis. Pituitary metastases are rare, but should be included in the differential diagnosis of invasive sellar lesions, especially if associated with ...

Introduction: Metastatic spread of lung cancer to the pituitary gland is relatively common and generally observed in an advanced stage of the disease and at autopsy. However, hypopituitirism as the first manifestation of lung cancer is extremely rare, with only 5 reports in the literature. We describe an unusual case of small-cell lung cancer presenting with pan-hypopituitirism secondary to pit...

I have read with interest the paper by Zhong et al. entitled “Pituitary atypical adenoma or carcinoma sensitive to temozolomide combined with radiation therapy: a case report of early identification and management” in which the authors described the case of a 30-year-old woman with highly suspect pituitary carcinoma without metastasis, sensitive to early radio-chemotherapy with temozolomide (TM...

Metastasis to the pituitary gland is an unusual situation in clinical practice, but the frequency thereof is increasing due to the increased survival of cancer patients, and greater availability of imaging. In most cases, they are found between the sixth and seventh decades of life, as determined in image examination of patients with known malignant neoplasm, but, generally, asymptomatic with r...

An 86-year-old woman presented with anterior and posterior pituitary deficiencies 5 months after chemoradiation for small-cell lung carcinoma. She had achieved remission, but gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging revealed a pituitary mass with suprasellar extension, which was unrecognized 3 months previously, indicating metastasis (Picture 1A) (1). Because she did not want ...