On December 17, 2022, a case study written by Christopher Hong, MD, a chief resident at Yale School of Medicine, and Bulent Omay, MD, surgical director of the Yale Pituitary Program, appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The case study highlighted a complex case of an 81-year-old patient with pituitary apoplexy. Pituitary apoplexy is a serious condition in which a pituitary tumor spontaneously infarcts or bleeds, causing issues such as sudden severe headaches, vision loss, and hormonal disturbances.
The patient’s doctor had been monitoring the tumor for years when it suddenly became apoplectic. The patient was rushed to the emergency room where Drs. Hong and Omay led a multidisciplinary effort to treat the patient.
Indeed, the multidisciplinary approach is what made this case successful, says Dr. Omay. “We had an otolaryngologist, endocrinologist, neuro-ophthalmologist, and neuro-ICU staff all working together with neurosurgery,” he says. “It’s important to have all aspects of care to monitor the patient because pituitary apoplexy can affect multiple organ systems simultaneously in a severe way.
Yale’s Pituitary Program puts into practice this multi-disciplinary approach. A highly integrated partnership between neurosurgery, otolaryngology, endocrinology, opthalmology, and radiology makes the Yale Pituitary Program a destination center for all diseases of the pituitary gland.