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Surgical Considerations of the Pituitary

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Abstract

Pituitary surgery includes the excisional treatment of lesions within or adjacent to the sella turcica, the hypophyseal or pituitary fossa of the sphenoid bone which contains the pituitary gland. These pituitary lesions are not rare in children and include a variety of tumors, the most common of which are craniopharyngiomas. In the pediatric population almost 90% of lesions in the sellar and parasellar region are craniopharyngiomas. The remaining 10% include a variety of other pathological entities including pituitary adenomas, Rathke’s cleft cysts, germinomas, hamartomas, lipomas, teratomas, dermoid cysts, epidermoid cysts, lymphocytic hypophysitis, and Langerhans cell histocytosis. This chapter reviews the evaluation of and the surgical approach to pituitary lesions.

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Correspondence to Samuel R. Browd .

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Niazi, T., Browd, S.R. (2018). Surgical Considerations of the Pituitary. In: Ledbetter, D., Johnson, P. (eds) Endocrine Surgery in Children. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54256-9_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54256-9_33

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