Limited significance of repeated long-term radiological and hormonal examination in nonfunctioning adrenal incidentalomas

ABSTRACT Purpose: The purposes of the present study were to evaluate growth rate of nonfunctioning adrenal incidentalomas (AIs) and their development to hormonal hypersecretion on follow-up. Materials and methods: A retrospective study was conducted from the electronic medical records. A total of 314 patients were diagnosed with adrenal tumors between 2000 and 2016. After excluding patients who had overt adrenal endocrine disorders or whose adrenal tumors were clinically diagnosed as metastatic malignancies, we investigated 108 patients with nonfunctioning AIs including characteristics, the treatment, the way of follow-up and pathology. Results: Fifteen patients received immediate adrenalectomy because of the initial tumor size or patient's preference. Pathological examination revealed malignancy in 2 patients. In the remaining 93 patients, radiological examinations were performed periodically. Tumor enlargement of ≥ 1.0cm was observed in 8.6% of the patients who were followed up as nonfunctioning AIs with a median follow-up period of 61.5 months (range: 4-192). Eleven patients underwent adrenalectomy. On the pathological examinations, all of the tumors, which showed a size increase, were diagnosed as benign tumors. Regarding the followed up patients without adrenalectomy, only 2.4% of the patients had tumor enlargement during the prolonged follow-up. Furthermore, none of the patients developed hormonal hypersecretion or clinical signs such as obesity, glucose intolerance or poorly controlled hypertension. Conclusions: Tumor enlargement of AIs did not correlate with malignancy. The value of repeat radiological and hormonal examinations may be limited in the long-term follow-up of patients whose AIs are not enlarged.

ABO-incompatible living-donor pediatric kidney transplantation in Japan

The Japanese ABO-Incompatible Transplantation Committee officially collected and analyzed data on pediatric ABO-incompatible living-donor kidney transplantation in July 2012. The age of a child was defined as <16 years, and 89 children who had undergone ABO-incompatible living-donor kidney transplantation from 1989 to 2011 were entered in a registry. These data were presented as the Japanese registry of pediatric ABO-incompatible living-donor kidney transplantation at the regional meetings of the International Pediatric Transplantation Association (IPTA) in Nagoya in September 2012 and in Sao Paulo in November 2012.