OBJECTIVE Pituitary apoplexy is a rare clinical entity and few cases treated with an endonasal endoscopic approach (EEA) have been reported. We report our experience of treating pituitary apoplexy using an EEA approach. METHODS We performed a retrospective chart review on all the patients who underwent EEA skull base and pituitary surgery between December 2003 and March 2012 performed by the ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE We report the first case of pituitary apoplexy caused by the rupture of an intracavernous carotid artery aneurysm embedded in a pituitary adenoma. CASE DESCRIPTION A 46-year-old man presented with clinical and CT findings typical of pituitary apoplexy. MRI showed an unusual flow-void protrusion into the intratumoral hematoma, which, however, was not diagnosed as a ruptu...

Abdominal apoplexy, or idiopathic spontaneous intraperitoneal hemorrhage, is a rare and often fatal condition resulting from a variety of disease processes affecting the arterial and venous abdominal vasculature. Preoperative and intraoperative diagnosis and treatment of abdominal apoplexy are challenging. The source of bleeding may remain elusive even after careful autopsy dissection given the...

Postoperative pituitary apoplexy is rare and usually occurs in the immediate postoperative period (within 12 hours) after subtotal resection of giant pituitary macroadenomas with fatal outcomes. We describe a unique patient with pituitary apoplexy occurring in a delayed fashion on the third postoperative day. Early detection and emergent endoscopic transsphenoidal exploration resulted in gross ...

Three cases are described in which the typical clinical features of pituitary apoplexy were associated with a normal pituitary fossa on plain skull radiographs. Failure to consider pituitary disease led to considerable delay in the diagnosis of two of the three patients. Catastrophic haemorrhage may occur even in small pituitary tumours and may result in the clinical syndrome of apoplexy with o...

Pituitary apoplexy is defined as a clinical syndrome that may include headache, visual deficits, ophthalmoplegia, or altered mental status. It may result from either infarction or hemorrhage of the pituitary gland. Prognosis is significantly improved with early diagnosis and surgical treatment. We report two cases in which diffusion-weighted MR imaging assisted in the early detection of acute p...

BACKGROUND Pituitary tumor apoplexy is a rare clinical syndrome caused by acute hemorrhage or infarction in a preexisting pituitary adenoma. It typically manifests as an acute episode of headache, visual disturbance, mental status changes, cranial nerve palsy, and endocrine pituitary dysfunction. However, not all patients present with classical symptoms, so it is pertinent to appreciate the cli...

The posterior lobe is an extension of the hypothalamus and secretes two hormones: antidiuretic hormone (or arginine vasopressin) and oxytocin. The pituitary stalk and the portal vessel pass through a small diaphragm that separates the sella turcica from the middle fossa. This anatomic arrangement places the pituitary at risk for infarction or hemorrhage when a mass increases pressure in the sel...

Post-traumatic pituitary apoplexy is uncommon, most of which present with a sudden onset of severe headache and visual impairments associated with a dumbbell-shaped pituitary tumor. We experienced an unusual case of post-traumatic pituitary apoplexy with atypical clinical features. A 66-year-old man presented with mild cerebral contusion and an incidentally diagnosed intrasellar tumor after a f...