Applications of radiotherapy and radiosurgery in the management of pediatric Cushing's disease: a review of the literature and our experience.
Surgical extirpation of pituitary adenomas is considered the mainstay of therapy in pediatric patients with Cushing's disease. However, a small subset of patients will require adjuvant therapy either due to tumor invasiveness, or disease recurrence. Conventional radiation therapy (or radiotherapy) delivers ionizing radiation to control hormonally active cells in fractionated doses (spread out over time) in order to give normal cells time to recover, while radiosurgery involves focusing a high dose of radiation structures in a single treatment session to the adenoma while generally sparing the normal gland and surrounding of any substantial amount of radiation. This paper reviews the effectiveness of radiation in the treatment of pediatric Cushing's disease.
Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Virginia Health Sciences Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA. jj5a@hscmail.mcc.virginia.edu
Jay
J
Jagannathan
Adam S
AS
Kanter
Claire
C
Olson
Jonathan H
JH
Sherman
Edward R
ER
Laws
Jason P
JP
Sheehan
D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D047748:Pituitary ACTH Hypersecretion / Q000532:radiotherapy* / Q000601:surgery*; D016634:Radiosurgery / Q000009:adverse effects; D011878:Radiotherapy / Q000009:adverse effects