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Epidemiology of common and uncommon adult pituitary tumors in the U.S. according to the 2017 World Health Organization classification

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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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Author notes

  1. Luz E. Castellanos and Catherine Gutierrez: co-first author.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Department of Pediatrics, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Luz E. Castellanos

  2. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Luz E. Castellanos, Catherine Gutierrez, Timothy Smith, Edward R. Laws & J. Bryan Iorgulescu

  3. Department of Neurosurgery, Pituitary and Neuroendocrine Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Timothy Smith & Edward R. Laws

  4. Department of Neurosurgery, Computational Neuroscience Outcomes Center, Brigham and Women’s, Boston, MA, USA

    Timothy Smith & J. Bryan Iorgulescu

  5. Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    J. Bryan Iorgulescu

  6. Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 75 Francis St., Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    J. Bryan Iorgulescu

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Correspondence to J. Bryan Iorgulescu.

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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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