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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Pituitary Endocrinology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2024.1440247
This article is part of the Research Topic Surgery and Management of Pituitary Region Tumours and Their Endocrine Outcomes View all 4 articles

Clinical features of pituitary carcinoma: analysis based on a case report and literature review

Provisionally accepted
Yongxiang Yang Yongxiang Yang Wanling Liang Wanling Liang *Kexia Fan Kexia Fan *Tao Yang Tao Yang *Jingmin Cheng Jingmin Cheng *
  • Department of Neurosurgery, General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Pituitary carcinoma (PC) is an extremely rare tumor of the adenohypophysis, which manifests as craniospinal dissemination and/or systemic metastasis. The diagnosis of PC is particularly difficult, as the clinical diagnosis only can be made after the metastasis is found. Owing to the complex diagnostic process and less effective treatments, the clinical prognosis of PC is usually very poor. Hence, it is of great significance to illustrate the diagnosis and treatment course of PC. In this case report, we described a 48-year-old male patient was diagnosed as pituitary adenoma (PA) initially, then was diagnosed as PC eventually after the spinal cord metastasis was found, and the treatment course was illustrated as well. Furthermore, we summarized all the published case reports until now and provided a comprehensive review for the diagnosis, treatment, prediction and clinical outcome for PC. We found most PC patients were ACTH/PRL-secreting tumors, Ki-67≥10% and P53 positive might have the potential to predict the transformation from PA to PC, surgery excision combined with temozolomide (TMZ) and radiotherapy is helpful to prolong the survival of PC patients.

    Keywords: Pituitary carcinoma, metastasis, temozolomide, Radiotherapy, Ki-67, p53

    Received: 29 May 2024; Accepted: 09 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Yang, Liang, Fan, Yang and Cheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Wanling Liang, Department of Neurosurgery, General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
    Kexia Fan, Department of Neurosurgery, General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
    Tao Yang, Department of Neurosurgery, General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
    Jingmin Cheng, Department of Neurosurgery, General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

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