Quality of life in patients with pituitary tumors.
OBJECTIVE
Quality of life (QoL) is impaired in patients with pituitary tumors, even after biochemical cure. However, it is not usually assessed in daily practice. The aim of this study is to highlight recent findings on QoL in the different types of pituitary adenomas and hypopituitarism.


RESULTS
Patients with acromegaly or Cushing's syndrome have the greatest impairment of QoL, and concomitant hypopituitarism worsens it further. The use of disease-generated QoL questionnaires allows dimensions specifically affected in that disease to be addressed and these dimensions are more sensitive to change after successful therapy; in some cases, improvement in patients' sense of well-being has been shown despite no hormonal change, indicating that evaluation of QoL is not such a soft end-point as thought by some.


CONCLUSIONS
Systematic evaluation of QoL in patients with pituitary diseases provides information not always contemplated by hormonal and routine clinical evaluation; this allows detection of not often contemplated health problems, which may then be approached and treated, improving the care provided to these patients.
Santos
Alicia
A
Departments of Endocrinology and Medicine, Hospital Sant Pau, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona 08025, Spain.
Resmini
Eugenia
E
Martínez
María-Antonia
MA
Martí
Camelia
C
Ybarra
Juan
J
Webb
Susan M
SM
D000172:Acromegaly / Q000523:psychology; D003480:Cushing Syndrome / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007018:Hypopituitarism / Q000523:psychology; D010911:Pituitary Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life