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Formation of internal carotid artery aneurysms following gamma knife radiosurgery for pituitary adenomas: a case series and literature review

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Abstract

Only two aneurysm formations in the internal carotid artery after gamma knife radiosurgery (GKRS) for pituitary adenomas are reported so far. Here, out of the 482 patients who underwent GKRS for pituitary adenomas at our institute, at least five developed aneurysms within the area of high single-dose irradiation. Three patients presented with epistaxis due to aneurysmal rupture and one presented with abducens paralysis due to nerve compression, while one was asymptomatic. The interval between irradiation and aneurysmal detection ranged from 14 to 21 years. Aneurysm formation in those conditions may be higher than previously thought.

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Funding

The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan

    Shota Yamashita & Teiji Tominaga

  2. Department of Neurosurgery, Hirosaki University Graduate School of Medicine, Hirosaki, Japan

    Atsushi Saito

  3. Jiro Suzuki Memorial Gamma House, Furukawa Seiryo Hospital, Osaki, Japan

    Hidefumi Jokura

  4. Department of Neurosurgery, Kohnan Hospital, Sendai, Japan

    Tomohiro Kawaguchi

  5. Department of Neurosurgery, Faculty of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

    Miki Fujimura

  6. Department of Neurosurgery, Senseki Hospital, Ishinomaki, Japan

    Yoshikazu Ogawa

Authors
  1. Shota Yamashita
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  2. Atsushi Saito
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  3. Hidefumi Jokura
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  4. Tomohiro Kawaguchi
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  5. Miki Fujimura
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  6. Yoshikazu Ogawa
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  7. Teiji Tominaga
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Shota Yamashita and Atsushi Saito; Methodology: Shota Yamashita; Formal analysis and investigation: Shota Yamashita and Hidefumi Jokura; Writing—original draft preparation: Shota Yamashita; Writing—review and editing: Atsushi Saito, Hidefumi Jokura, Tomohiro Kawaguchi, Miki Fujimura, and Yoshikazu Ogawa; Funding acquisition: None; Supervision: Teiji Tominaga.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shota Yamashita.

Ethics declarations

The manuscript does not contain clinical studies, and details that might disclose the identity of the subjects were omitted.

Ethics approval

Ethical approval was waived by the institutional review board of the hospital in view of the retrospective nature of the study and all the procedures being performed were part of the routine care.

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No consent is required because no data and image in the submitted work has identifying information.

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The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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A case report addressing one patient in our study population was published in Neurol Med Chir (Tokyo) 51:226–229, 2011.

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Yamashita, S., Saito, A., Jokura, H. et al. Formation of internal carotid artery aneurysms following gamma knife radiosurgery for pituitary adenomas: a case series and literature review. Acta Neurochir 165, 2257–2265 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00701-023-05690-8

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