ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Neuro-Oncology and Neurosurgical Oncology
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1490783
Clinical Characteristics and Surgical Approach for Pituitary Granular Cell Tumors: A Case Series of Six Patients and Literature Review
Provisionally accepted
- Nanchang University, Nanchang, China
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Objective To investigate the clinical characteristics and therapeutic approaches for granular cell tumors (GCT) of the neurohypophysis. Materials and Methods Retrospective case series and analyzed the clinical data of six patients with histopathologically confirmed GCT of the neurohypophysis, also conducting a simple review of relevant literature. Results The median age at diagnosis for the cohort of six patients was 41.0±11.73 years, wtih an age range of 21.8 to 52.7 years.,A predominance of femalepatients was noted, accounting for five out of six cases. The most common clinical symptoms were headache and visual disturbances, each reported in fiveof the six patients.. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain predominantly revealed a rounded morphology, and well-defined boundaries. Of these tumors, two were located in the suprasellar region while four were situated within the sellar region, encompassing intrasellar, suprasellar, and parasellar locations. Contrast-enhanced MRI demonstrated heterogeneous enhancement in four cases and homogeneous enhancement in two cases. Surgical intervention, either through a neuroendoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal approach or craniotomy, achieved total or subtotal tumor resection in all patients. Postoperative histopathological examination confirmed the diagnosis of GCT in each instance. All patients participated in follow-up evaluations, during which varying degrees of clinical symptom improvement were documented. Importantly, none of the four patients who underwent complete tumor resection exhibited recurrence or metastasis. Conclusion GCT of the neurohypophysis are rarely encountered clinical practice. The definitive diagnosis of GCT primarily relies on histopathological evaluation. Currently, the standard therapeutic approach involves complete surgical excision of the tumor using a neuroendoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal technique. Post-resection, the rates of recurrence and metastasis are significantly low.
Keywords: Granular cell tumors, neurohypophysis, Imaging features, Pathological diagnosis, prognosis
Received: 03 Sep 2024; Accepted: 17 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Zhang, Huang, Ye and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jun Liu, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China
Xinyun Ye, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China
Guanlin Huang, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China
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