Case Report Endoscopic Endonasal Transsphenoidal Resection for Pituitary Apoplexy during the Third Trimester of Pregnancy

Copyright © 2014 Adesh Tandon et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Pituitary apoplexy is an uncommon phenomenon typically characterized by vascular insufficiency or acute hemorrhage into a pituitary adenoma. The overall incidence of pituitary apoplexy ranges between 1 and 25 % of all pituitary adenomas. With the widespread use of MRI technology, the diagnosis of asymptomatic intratumoral hemorrhage is closer to 10%. The authors report a case of a 27-year-old female in her 36thweek of pregnancywhopresentedwith severe onset headache and acute left-sided vision loss. MRI of the brain revealed a large hemorrhagic mass occupying the sella turcica. The patient underwent an emergent endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal resection for pituitary apoplexy. Postoperatively, the patient’s neurologic deficit resolved. Minimally invasive endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal resection of pituitary apoplexy can be safely utilized in third trimester pregnant women presenting with acute severe neurologic deficits. 1