Background: Acromegaly is a rare disease resulting in clinical sequelae with significant morbidity and mortality due to the central tumor mass effect and prolonged growth hormone (GH) hypersecretion.
Objectives: The goal is to describe the epidemiology, clinical features, presence of comorbidities, and treatment outcomes of acromegaly in Saudi Arabia.
Methods: Data was collected through a retrospective review of the charts of all patients diagnosed with acromegaly from nine major hospitals in Saudi Arabia over a period of more than 25 years.
Results: A total of 195 patients (116 males and 79 females), with a mean age at diagnosis of 43 ± 12 (males) and 46 ± 14 years (females), from nine major hospitals were identified and included in the analysis. All cases were caused by pituitary adenomas, of which 92.4% were macroadenomas. Headache, coarse facial features, acral growth, and sweating/oily skin were by far the most frequent presenting complaints. The most common comorbidities were diabetes mellitus (51.7%), followed by hypertension (50%) and visual field defect (30.5%). The vast majority (95%) of patients were treated surgically (98%). Twenty-four percent also received radiotherapy, and 74.4% received medical therapy. When stringent criteria were applied for assessment of outcomes of therapy, 28.7% of the patients were cured and 30.1% had their disease under control, while 28.7% were found to have active disease despite receiving multimodal therapy.
Conclusions: Our findings highlight the need for a national acromegaly registry to enable early identification, evaluation, and selection of the best therapeutic approaches to improve the outcome and remission rate of the disease.
Keywords: Acromegaly; Epidemiology; Medical therapy and outcome; Pituitary adenoma; Radiotherapy; Transsphenoidal surgery.