What is the reason for amenorrhea or lactation in young women? Young women with amenorrhea or lactation should be careful of pituitary tumors

A woman in her early thirties had been amenorrhea for a year. She was irritable, easily angered, and had a big change in appearance. She was examined in the gynecology department: a CT scan confirmed that she had a pituitary tumor, and she was transferred to our neurosurgery department for treatment. What is a pituitary tumor? It is a group of tumors that arise from the anterior and posterior pituitary and residual cells of the craniopharyngeal epithelium. Pituitary tumors account for about 10% of intracranial tumors. The majority of this group of tumors are adenomas in the anterior lobe, and those from the posterior lobe are rare. A variety of intracranial metastatic cancers can involve the pituitary gland and must be differentiated from primary pituitary tumors. The cause of pituitary tumors is not yet fully understood.

Symptoms of pituitary tumors can be divided into two symptom clusters:

Category 1: abnormal hormone secretion syndromes: syndromes of excessive hormone secretion, such as acromegaly caused by excessive growth hormone; syndromes of insufficient hormone secretion. When non-functional tumors increase and normal pituitary tissue is damaged, the secretion of gonadotropin decreases, and amenorrhea, infertility or impotence are often the earliest to occur and are the most common.

Category II: Symptoms caused by tumor compression of the tissues surrounding the pituitary gland: Nerve fiber irritation headache, which is a persistent headache; patients with optic nerve, optic chiasm and optic nerve bundle compression experience decreased vision, visual field defects and fundus changes; other compression syndromes.

Tests to be done for pituitary tumors include:

1. The frontal and lateral views of the skull show that the sella turcica is enlarged and deformed, the sella turcica floor is sunken, there is a double floor, the dorsum of the sella turcica is thinned and stands up backwards, and the bone is often absorbed and destroyed;

2. The density of the pituitary gland on CT is higher than that of the brain tissue;

3. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has better resolution of pituitary soft tissue than CT and can make up for the shortcomings of CT;

4. Pneumoencephalography and cerebral angiography.

There are three treatments for pituitary tumors: surgical resection, radiotherapy, and drug therapy. The choice of treatment for individual cases must depend on the nature and size of the tumor, the compression and erosion of surrounding tissues, pituitary function, and systemic condition.

Young women who experience premature menopause or unexplained galactorrhea should seek early treatment. The cause of the disease is not necessarily a gynecological disease or a physiological reason. Sometimes it may be a pituitary tumor. Early treatment can slow the development of symptoms and cure them in time.