Inactive adenomas

Abstract

Pituitary adenomas are benign tumors of the adenohy-pophysis and are the most common sellar neoplasm. Most tumors remain undiagnosed, and autopsy series have reported a frequency of up to 27% [41]. When data have been pooled from multiple surgical series, however, the frequency appears closer to 11% [41]. Modern CT and MRI series substantiate this latter figure [6, 20, 41]. The overwhelming majority of these undiagnosed tumors are microadenomas [41]. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.