Perception of health and cognitive dysfunction in acromegaly patients

摘要

As therapeutic options improve for pituitary adenomas, we like to think we are capable of 'curing' patients with these diseases. However, in parallel to the availability of instruments to evaluate the patient's subjective perception of outcome of the disease, evidence is accumulating on residual morbidity despite endocrine control of hormonal dysfunction. Over the last few years, cognitive dysfunction has been identified as one of the most common co-morbidities of pituitary tumours. Why this occurs is still unclear and could be related to neurovascular decline, ageing, suffering a chronic disease, apart from hormone imbalance, either chronic hormone excess or deficiency (mainly GH or cortisol).