Anyone living with acromegaly should understand their treatment options and why they’re being proposed.

The UCLA Pituitary Tumor Program has a video outlining some of the treatment considerations for acromegaly. It’s just under 7 minutes long and I encourage you to check it out, but I also caution you that the information is quite dense and intended more for a healthcare professional audience than a patient audience.

SO, I’ve decided to highlight the key info here (in what I hope are simpler terms):

Acromegaly Treatment Goals

• Normalize growth hormone (GH) levels
• Normalize insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) levels

Historical Approach to Acromegaly Treatment

• Surgical removal (also called “resection”) of pituitary tumors

Why That’s Problematic

• Surgery (especially brain surgery) comes with serious risks
• Studies have shown that even with surgery, IGF-1 and GH levels may remain elevated
  • Depending on the extent of the tumor and other factors, the success rate for tumor resection performed by an expert surgeon (one who does at least 50-100 surgeries a year) is 22-65%

Other Acromegaly Treatment Options

• Front-line medicinal approach
  • Medicines used to treat acromegaly include Octreotide and Lanreotide

Why It Should Be Considered

• Various studies (beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the early 2000s) show medical therapy in the treatment of acromegaly can:
  • control GH levels in up to 73% of patients
  • control IFG-1 levels in up to 72% of patients
  • shrink tumors
    • A study published in 2002 showed octreotide shrunk tumors by as much as 51%
    • Another study conducted in the UK and also published in 2002 showed that 73% of patients treated with octreotide as their primary therapy had at least a 30% reduction in their tumor size
      • that same study showed controlled GH levels in 79% of patients, and…
      • normal IGF-1 levels in 53% of patients

Conclusion

• While scientific leaders in acromegaly may have suggested surgery in the past, minds are changing and a medicinal approach is now being viewed as a reasonable first-line treatment

Is this information helpful? What else do consider when choosing an acromegaly treatment? Discuss below!