Clinicopathologic analysis of adrenocortical diseases

Abstract

Objective To investigate the correlationship between clinical and histopathological results of adrenocortical hyperplasia,adenoma and adenocarcinoma in the adrenocortical glomerular,fascicular and reticular zones. Methods A total number of 167 702 surgical specimens were collected by the Department of pathology at the General Hospital of Tianjin Medical University from 1993 -2008.Of these,there were 631 adrenocortical specimens.Statistic analysis was done with Run test,t or t'test and x2 test on data in the aspects of proportion rate,mean age,sex proportion and relationship between clinical and pathological results of adrenocortical diseases. Results The total number of adrenal diseases and adrenocortical diseases were 910 cases (0.54％) and 631 cases (0.38％),respectively.The number of adrenocortical glomerular,fascicular,reticular diseases were 310 cases (49.13％),319 cases (50.55％) and 2 cases (0.32％),respectively.The rate of adrenal diseases and adrenocortical diseases specimens did not change during the 16 year study period.The trend in proportion of hyperplasia,adenoma,adenocarcinoma in adrenocortical glomerular,fascicular and reticular zones did not change as well.The proportion pattern showed that there were more cases of adenoma than of hyperplasia and adenocarcinoma.The functional diseases of adrenocortical glomerular,fascicular and reticular zone (90.97％,79.00％,100.00％ ) were higher than nonfunctional diseases in the corresponding zones (9.03％,21.00％,0％ ) and both were higher in female patients.The mean age of nonfunctional patients with adenoma,glomerular zone adenocarcinoma and hyperplasia,adenoma of fascicular zone was higher than that in functional diseases.Interestingly,the mean age of glomerular zone adenocarcinoma patients (62.7 yrs) was higher than that in hyperplasia patients (47.8 yrs) and in adenoma patients (44.8 yrs).The mean and male diagnostic ages of adenocarcinoma of fascicular (44.3 yrs,50.0 yra) were higher than that in adenoma (44.0 yrs,49.1 yrs) and hyperplasia (41.5 yrs,40.9 yrs) respectively.But the female mean diagnostic age of fascicular adenocarcinoma (38.7 yrs) was lower than that in adenoma (42.4 yrs) and hyperplasia (41.9 yrs) respectively and the lowest average age was for nonfunctional adenocarcinoma (34.4 yrs).The diameters of the functional and nonfunctional adenocarcinoma were large (4.3 cm and 4.0 cm in glomerular zone,7.1 cm and 8.0 cm in fascicular zone).The carcinoma cells were in serious atyrpia,haemorrhage,necrosis and capsular or vascular infiltration.The rates of functional hyperplasia,adenoma with hypertension in Conn,Cushing or adrenogenital syndrome of adrenocortical glomerular,fascicular,reticular zone were higher than that without hypertension,but their tumor diameters were similar.The diameters of functional adenoma in glomerular or fascicularer ( 1.7 cm,2.3 cm ) were lower than that of nonfunctional adenoma (2.3 cm,2.4 cm ) and the diameters of glomerular tumors were smaller than that of fascicular tumors.Nonfunctional adenoma ( 2.5 cm,2.0 cm ) of glomerular or fascicular by check up finding were bigger than that of non-endocrine adenoma ( 2.5 cm,2.3cm).There were seven cases with adrenogenital syndrome (2 male cases,5 female cases ),among these,there were 4 fascicularer adenoma cases,1 adenocarcinoma case,1 network hyperplasia case and 1 adenoma case. Conclusions Genetic abnormality plays an important role in pathogenesis of adrenocortical disease and environment had less influence.Radiological examinations (CT and MRI) of adrenocortical diseases are the first choice and have important roles in evaluating tumor characteristics.There is close relationship between clinical manifestation and pathology.However,the exact diagnosis of definite type of disease and nature of tumor needs to be made by pathologic examination. Key words: Adrenal cortex disease; Pathology, clinical