Adrenal Incidentalomas – Adrenal Cortex

00:01 Let's talk about a few issues within the adrenals and we will begin by looking at incidentalomas, as the name implies.

00:09 Adrenal masses incidentally detected up to one and a half percent of your abdominal scans? incidentalomas.

00:17 Majority of these are non-functioning adrenal adenomas, but can represent hormonally active or even malignant lesions.

00:24 So, there is further workup that you're always making sure to confirm or to diagnose your patient accordingly.

00:32 Pheochromocytoma may be asymptomatic and remember, a pheochromocytoma would be a adenoma that's located inside your adrenal medulla.

00:43 It's an adenoma, a pheochromocytoma; it is not a cancer.

00:48 It's not-It's not malignant, it's not adenocarcinoma.

00:51 And all adrenal incidentaloma patients should be screened with plasma 24 hours in the urine and you're looking for metanephrines.

00:59 Remember, the hypertension that a patient with pheochromocytoma might be episodic.

01:04 So, incidentalomas, always check for urine to see as to whether or not you can find metabolites.

01:10 In the absence of clinical signs and symptoms, workup for Cushing's syndrome and primary hyperaldosteronism is not indicated.

01:18 That's important.

01:20 Next step of management, follow-up, perhaps, but in terms of working up further, nothing, not necessary.

01:29 Biopsy cannot differentiate benign from malignant primary adrenal tumours, but has a role in evaluating possible adrenal metastases in patients with known extra-adrenal primary malignancies.

01:42 So, if you were to take a look at that adenoma, biopsy would not be your next step of management necessarily to distinguish between benign and malignant, but if it's coming from, let's say, a renal cell cancer that's metastasized to the adrenals, sure.

02:00 The biopsy will help you differentiate between the two because it will show you the histology of where the metastasis is coming from.

02:09 Adrenal imaging is important.

02:11 Lesions less than 10 Hf are noncontrast CT are almost always benign or may or may not be functional.

02:19 Greater than 50 percent washout of enhancement adrenal protocol CT also suggest benign adenoma, unless there is a very high peak enhancement which raises possibility of pheochromocytoma.

02:32 So, usually if it's less than 10, usually tends to be benign, but that is not a guarantee.

02:39 Lesions greater than four centimetres increase suspicion of malignancy and should be automatically next step of management surgically removed upon adrenal imaging.

02:51 Pheochromocytoma usually a vascular tumour, increased T2 signal on MRI and you would then find enhancement adrenal protocol CT, meaning to say that if you're doing an avid arterial phase enhancement, all of these would then help you distinguish a pheochromocytoma from others, usually, a vascular tumour.

03:14 Remember, if you have a pheochromocytoma outside of the adrenal medulla, as far as you're concerned, you would then consider that to be a paraganglion.