Pituitary Tumor – Medication

Transcript

Pituitary masses are one of the peculiar masses of the brain because there are some of them, in fact, a substantial fraction of them that can be treated with medication alone. And actually cured in many instances with medication alone, and so as scary as the prospect of a pituitary tumor sounds, about a third of them are actually a condition that we call, or a tumor that we call, a prolactinoma. And that word is chosen because that tumor, about a third of pituitary tumors are secreting this hormone called prolactin. And if we remember back, prolactin is the hormone that is secreted that allows milk production, post pregnancy, and it is a hormone that we can control and it’s a hormone that we can actually suppress with the use of some medication.