Outcome of visual acuity after surgical removal of pituitary adenomas

Abstract

Introduction. Pituitary adenomas with suprasellar extension may produce anterior visual pathway compression, resulting in characteristic visual deficit. Surgical decompression of these structures prevents further visual deterioration and its postop? erative recovery. Objective. The aim of this study was to investigate pre? and postoperative visual acuity (VA) in patients with pituitary ad? enomas, and to detect the influence of prognostic factors, such as symptoms duration, degree of visual acuity reduction and tumor size in the assessment of the prognosis of postoperative visual function. Methods. We analyzed 40 consecutive patients who fulfilled three criteria: evidence of preoperative visual dysfunction, transsphenoidal or transfrontal tumor resection and hystologically verified pituitary adenoma. A visual examination was performed under standard conditions, pre and postoperatively (10 days, one month and six months after surgery). A paired t?test was used to assess the differences of pre? and postoperative characteristics values, and the Chisquare test of independence in the assessment of the influence of prognostic factors. Results. Postoperative improvement of VA was seen in 84.61% patients (68% eyes). Eyes with preoperative mild and moderate degree of VA reduction showed improvement in 89.65% eyes in contrast to 22.60% eyes with preoperative severe reduction of VA, which was all statistically significant. Eyes in patients with tumor smaller than 20 mm had improvement of VA in 91.66% eyes, while eyes with tumor larger than 40 mm had improvement of VA in 61.11% eyes, which was statistically significant. When symptoms duration was below two years the improvement of VA was detected in 65.38% eyes as related to 50% eyes with symptoms duration exceeding two years, which was not statistically significant. Conclusion. Pituitary adenomas commonly cause visual impairment. Postoperatively the majority of patients show a distinct improvement of visual acuity. The degree of preoperative visual loss and tumor size influence the final visual outcome, and not the duration of symptoms.