Early symptoms of pituitary tumor

Pituitary tumor is a tumor disease. Although most of them are benign, if it is not treated in time, it will cause many complications. The first is abnormal hormone secretion, causing headaches, sexual dysfunction, decreased vision, infertility, etc. So, what are the early symptoms of pituitary tumors? Let's take a look.

Early symptoms of pituitary tumors:

1. Changes in facial and body shape

Growth hormone-producing pituitary adenomas cause excessive growth of limbs, muscles and internal organs due to excessive secretion of growth hormone. In puberty, gigantism occurs before the epiphyses fuse, while in adults, the symptoms include enlarged hands and feet, a broad head and face, high cheekbones, enlarged nose, thickened lips, loose, coarse and dark skin, increased hair, hoarseness, snoring during sleep and sleep apnea syndrome.

2. Decreased vision and visual field loss

Pituitary adenoma can break through the sella turcica floor and grow downward, invading important blood vessels and nerves in the skull to both sides, but the most common way of growth is to develop above the sella turcica and compress the optic chiasm and optic nerve, causing decreased vision and visual field defects. Patients often complain of decreased vision and inability to see to the sides. If visual and visual field disorders occur, surgery is required as soon as possible.

3. Poor sexual function

The main reasons for sexual dysfunction caused by pituitary adenoma are: the compression of normal pituitary tissue by pituitary adenoma and the damage caused by radiotherapy cause pituitary dysfunction, which affects the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis in the human body, resulting in insufficient secretion of gonadotropin, further leading to hypogonadism; prolactin-type pituitary microadenoma affects sexual life, which is related to hyperprolactinemia inhibiting the release of gonadotropin, reducing pituitary responsiveness and reducing testosterone production; thyrotropin-type pituitary adenoma has low thyroid function and slow systemic metabolism, which reduces the metabolism of estrogen and androgen in the body with the lack of thyroid hormone; obesity caused by adrenocorticotropic hormone-type and growth hormone-type pituitary adenomas is also one of the causes of sexual dysfunction.

4. Headache

About 2/3 of patients have headache symptoms in the early stages. The pain is mainly located behind the eye sockets, in the forehead and near the temples on both sides. It is mild and occurs intermittently.

The above is an introduction to the early symptoms of pituitary tumors. I hope it will be helpful to you and I wish you a speedy recovery.