Pituitary Tumor Treatment

Surgery is the primary treatment recommended for most pituitary tumors. And for many people, that’s the only treatment needed. Others, particularly those with prolactinomas, may need medications or radiation therapy.

The treatment recommended by your doctor largely depends on the symptoms you are having, if any. Symptoms are usually associated with the size and location of the tumor. Or symptoms may arise when a tumor secretes a hormone, resulting in a hormone imbalance in the body.

At Memorial Sloan Kettering, our goal is to give every person who comes to us for pituitary tumor treatment compassionate, personalized care from a multidisciplinary team of experts. Your team will include doctors, nurses, and other professionals whose sole focus is tumors that occur in the pituitary gland and other nearby areas.

Specialists from all areas of pituitary tumor care will design a treatment plan especially for you. Their areas of expertise include surgery, endocrinology, radiation therapy, and quality-of-life issues. Having all of them work together helps us ensure that we choose the best combination of therapies to treat your tumor and give you the best outcome possible.

How We Care for You

• We offer our surgical patients a complete approach to surgery, including minimally invasive options that can help you recover faster and leave no scarring.
• Intraoperative MRI helps our surgeons remove tumors more safely and with greater accuracy, reducing the likelihood you will need a second surgery.
• Our patients have access to new drug treatments through our program of clinical trials.
• We deliver more-effective radiation therapy directly to tumors using the most precise methods available.
• We give our patients the most convenient and seamless experience possible by offering appointments with multiple specialists all at the same time.
• We provide personalized long-term follow-up care.

Our experts are among the most experienced in the nation at treating pituitary gland tumors, caring for more than 200 people with pituitary and other skull base tumors each year. Patients receive personalized care from our multidisciplinary group of experts, which includes a neurosurgeon, neuro-endocrinologist, neuro-ophthalmologist, head and neck surgeon, radiation oncologist, neuro-oncologist, and neuro-radiologist.

These experts meet biweekly at pituitary tumor board meetings to discuss challenging cases as well as referrals from colleagues and patients at MSK and at other hospitals.

Often, our patients are able to see multiple specialists — a neuro-endocrinologist, neurosurgeon, and head and neck surgeon — all at the same time, during our pituitary tumor clinic hours at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s 64th Street Outpatient Center>. This approach spares our patients the inconvenience of having to make multiple appointments with the different specialists involved in their care.