assessment of clinicopathologic features in patients with pituitary adenomas in northeast of iran: a 13-year retrospective study

background: intracranial lesions of the pituitary gland are common pituitary adenomas, accounting for 6-10% of all symptomatic intracranial tumors. in this retrospective study, the clinicopathologic features and survival rate of pituitary adenomas were evaluated. methods: the present retrospective study was conducted on 83 patients with pituitary adenomas, referring to radiation oncology departments of ghaem and omid hospitals, mashhad, iran, over a period of 13 years (1999-2012). data obtained from clinical records including clinical features, type of surgery (if performed), treatment modality, overall survival rate, and progression-free survival rate were analyzed. results: eighty-three patients including 44 males (53%) and 39 females (47%) participated in this study. the median age was 40 years (age range: 10-69 years). chiasm compression was reported in 62 patients (74.4%), and 45.78% of the subjects suffered from headaches. functional and non-functional adenomas were reported in 44 (53.01%) and 39 (46.99%) patients, respectively. in cases with functional and non-functional adenomas, the disease was controlled in 95 and 84.5% of the subjects for 3 years, respectively. furthermore, 1- and 3-year survival rates for functional adenoma were 84.6 and 23%, respectively; the corresponding values were 90.9 and 22.7% in non-functional adenomas, respectively. conclusion: in this study, a significant correlation between headache severity and type of adenoma was observed. so, application of surgery and radiotherapy together could be a highly effective approach for treating functional adenomas, although it is less efficient for the non-functional type.