Abstract
Purpose
To examine the contemporary epidemiology of adult pituitary tumors with a particular focus on uncommon tumor types, using the 2017 WHO Classification of pituitary tumors.
Methods
Adult patients presenting with a pituitary or sellar tumor between 2004 and 2017 were identified from the U.S. National Cancer Database, with tumor type categorized according to the 2017 WHO classification. Descriptive epidemiological statistics were evaluated and reported for all pituitary tumor types and subtypes.
Results
113,349 adults with pituitary tumors were identified, 53.0% of whom were female. The majority of pituitary tumors were pituitary adenomas (94.0%), followed by craniopharyngiomas (3.8%). Among pituitary adenomas, whereas 71.6% of microadenomas presented in females, only 46.7% of macroadenomas and 41.3% of giant adenomas did (p < 0.001). For craniopharyngiomas, 71.2% were adamantinomatous and 28.8% were papillary, with adamantinomatous tumors associated with Black non-Hispanic race/ethnicity (ORadj = 2.44 vs. White non-Hispanic, 99.9 %CI = 1.25–4.75, p < 0.001) in multivariable analysis. The remaining 0.7% (n = 676) of pathology-confirmed pituitary tumor types were composed of: 21% tumors of the posterior pituitary, 16% chordomas, 11% pituitary carcinomas (i.e. adenohypophyseal histology with metastasis; herein most frequently to bone), 10% meningiomas, 8% germ cell tumors, 7% hematolymphoid (largely DLBCLs), and 4% neuronal/paraneuronal (largely gangliogliomas). Pituitary carcinomas and posterior pituitary tumors demonstrated a male predilection (62.2% and 56.0%, respectively), whereas sellar meningiomas predominated in females (84.1%). Age, race/ethnicity, tumor size, and overall survival further varied across uncommon pituitary tumor types.
Conclusions
Our findings provide a detailed contemporary dissection of the epidemiology of common and uncommon adult pituitary tumors in the context of WHO2017.
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Data availability
The National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) is a joint project of the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society. The CoC’s NCDB and the hospitals participating in the CoC NCDB are the source of the de-identified data used herein; they have not verified and are not responsible for the statistical validity of the data analysis or the conclusions derived by the authors. Data available by NCDB application.
Code availability
Not applicable.
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Funding
JBI gratefully acknowledges funding support from the National Cancer Institute (K12CA090354) and Conquer Cancer Foundation. LEC acknowledges funding support from the NIH (T32DK007028). CG is an NCI F31 Diversity Individual Predoctoral Fellow.
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Castellanos, L.E., Gutierrez, C., Smith, T. et al. Epidemiology of common and uncommon adult pituitary tumors in the U.S. according to the 2017 World Health Organization classification. Pituitary 25, 201–209 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11102-021-01189-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11102-021-01189-6