Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Pheo growth speed

One important feature of pheos is that they always grow. The growth speed of pheo, however, is only known for patients with von Hippel Lindau disease. For people with true sporadic pheo (~70% of all pheos), we have little knowledge on the growth speed of their pheos. The reason is that familial pheos can be monitored but sporadic pheos are usually resected once they are diagnosed. Only under two conditions, patient's choice of delaying surgery and omission of pheo testing of incidentally-identified adrenal mass, the growth speed of sporadic pheos can be assessed.

I recently took care of a patient with likely sporadic pheo. This patient's adrenal pheo increased from 0.6 x 1.2 cm to 3.0 x 3.6 cm in 6 years. This patient is among the few I know with recorded growth speed of a sporadic pheo.

The information on pheo growth speed is much needed to tell patients what they will expect of their tumor. I would like to do a survey of the growth speed of pheo, whether with genetic mutations or not. If you have a pheo that was imaged multiple times, please let me know the size of the tumor, the time interval in-between imaging, and whether you have a pheo syndrome (with mutations) or not. I thank you in advance.

Dr. Pheo