Are prolactinomas serious?

Prolactinoma is certainly a serious problem because it poses a relatively large threat to human health. Although most of them are benign tumors, they may cause more adverse harm if not treated in time. Once similar symptoms are found clinically, treatment should be taken seriously.

1. In clinical practice, it is found that many women of childbearing age go to the gynecology department for examination due to infertility. It is found that the inability to get pregnant is not caused by gynecological reasons, but by problems with the pituitary gland. From the blood test items, namely the six hormone test reports, it was found that the serum prolactin values ​​of these pituitary tumor patients who were unable to get pregnant were much higher than those of normal people. This is what is commonly referred to as hyperprolactinemia in clinical practice. High prolactin can affect ovarian function and further affect ovulation; high prolactin acts on the pituitary gland and can affect the secretion of gonadotropin. These factors become a stumbling block to whether women of childbearing age can have children.

2. In addition to affecting fertility, body tumors can also affect vision and may even cause blindness. From the study of human anatomy, it is found that the pituitary gland is relatively close to structures such as the optic chiasm and optic nerve. When a pituitary tumor grows to a certain size, it will quickly compress the optic chiasm and optic nerve. Therefore, some patients in clinical practice come to the hospital with vision and visual field impairment as the first symptom.

3. Regarding whether having a pituitary tumor is serious, it is worth noting that patients with pituitary tumors often also experience symptoms of increased intracranial pressure, such as headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, etc. Some patients may have abnormal hormone secretion, resulting in acromegaly, which affects their appearance or may make it impossible for the patient to cope with their daily life, leading to a series of life, psychological, and social problems. For some male patients with pituitary tumors, they may experience sexual dysfunction and go to andrology for treatment.

4. Among patients with pituitary tumors, many will experience symptoms such as decreased vision. Since there is no obvious visual field defect in the early stage, it is often mistaken for myopia (if the patient is middle-aged or elderly, it is mistakenly believed to be presbyopia). For some younger patients with pituitary tumors, their body shape and height do not match their age due to excessive secretion of growth hormone. However, some parents often mistakenly believe that this is caused by nutritional problems, thus prolonging the course of the disease.