Pituitary tumour apoplexy due to pituitary adenoma in a dog: clinical, 3T MRI and CT features

摘要

Pituitary apoplexy (PA) is a neurological syndrome resulting from sudden infarction/haemorrhage within a normal or tumoural pituitary gland. Prompt imaging is essential to correlate haemorrhagic/ischaemic changes with clinical signs. The purpose of this report is to describe the clinical, CT and 3T MRI findings of PA in a 13-year-old dog previously diagnosed with pituitary-dependent hyperadrenocorticism. Neurological examination revealed an anxious-compulsive behaviour, internal ophthalmoplegia and bilaterally reduced menace response. Brain MRI showed a pituitary mass with two focal well-defined areas. The first was T2 weighted (T2w) and T1 weighted (T1w) hyperintense, FLAIR hypointense to the grey matter, and mildly contrast-enhancing with signal void artefact in GE-T2*, compatible with late/subacute haemorrhage; the second was T2w hypointense, T1w, FLAIR and GE-T2* isointense/hypointense to the grey matter and moderately enhancing, compatible with acute haemorrhage. The dog recovered after 24 hours, but internal ophthalmoplegia remained. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first report describing MRI findings in a dog with PA.