So I intimated that I had a medical issue in my New Year’s blog post. I have a tumor on my pituitary gland, technically called a pituitary adenoma. You can Google it if you want technical literature, but basically it’s a benign tumor. About 6% of people have them, but usually they grow to about 1mm in size, and then shrink back down to nothing. Mine, by contrast, is about 1cm in size, and is causing some mild problems.

Basically, the tumor was discovered accidentally. But it can effect the optic nerve and the endocrine system. My endocrine system is showing some VERY mild dysfunction, and I’m having some VERY mild vision loss on my peripheral vision. By VERY mild I mean it’s only detectable in detailed medical tests. The MRI scans don’t show that it is growing, but it is pressing up against my optic nerve, and if it does grow further could potentially cause blindness. Hence the procedure to have it removed.

They go in endoscopically, through the nose in a similar manner to which the ancient Egyptians used to remove brains when mummifying corpses. An ENT will get the instruments into place, and then they will drill a hole through the back of my sinus cavity, and the neurosurgeon will remove the tumor. I should be in the hospital for 2-3 nights, followed by recovery at home. If everything goes well, I’ll be back to normal in no time. However, here is a list of the following things that could go wrong:

• The sinus cavity could fail to heal properly and cerebral spinal fluid could leak out my nose. This would require going in to re-seal the wound, and in rare instances, they will put a spinal tap into my back to let it leak out there while the healing process finishes in my sinuses. There is a possibility of contracting meningitis should the wound get infected, which would require antibiotic treatment.
• A blood clot could form where the tumor resides, requiring a second surgery to go in and get the blood clot out.
• The pituitary gland could cease to function. Since the pituitary gland regulates all hormonal functions, including the reproductive system, the liver, pancreas and kidneys, I would need to take a series of pills for the remainder of my life to in effect manually regulate my endocrine system. Apparently, this involves taking up to 4 pills a day, depending on the degree of dysfunction.

That’s about it. I suppose someone could always slip up and kill me or something, but from every neurosurgeon I’ve spoken to, and I think that’s about 4 now, this type of surgery is about as routine as neurosurgery gets, and typically goes without a hitch.

I happen to be lucky to have an ENT in the family, who did his residency at Harvard and could recommend who he believed to be the top endoscopic neurosurgeon in Boston. But apparently, there are still neurosurgeons out there doing this non-endoscopically, which I gather involves lifting the face off the skull and doing other things which sound horrific and nasty. The endoscopic approach was pioneered and perfected by the University of Pittsburgh in 1995, so it’s been around long enough for doctors to be familiar with it. Which just surprises me that there are apparently doctors out there who haven’t caught up with the less invasive procedures yet.

Along those lines, of having difficulty finding a good doctor, I feel I ought to point you to this article which discusses how difficult it is to find the right surgeon. I wish I had some public policy type recommendations regarding this but I don’t. Surely there ought to be a more systematic way to evaluate a surgeon’s efficacy before you go under the knife than by word of mouth, but apparently that’s the best there is.

In any event, if you want to have fun looking at my MRI scans, they’re here for the downloading. By the time this posts, I’l be in the process of being wheeled into surgery, which should take roughly 3 hours. I’ll be sure to let you know how things go as soon as I can get back on a computer.

Tags: LinkedIn, Pituitary Adenoma, Surgery

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 7:30 am and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.