ABSCESS FORMATION WITHIN A PITUITARY ADENOMA: REPORT OF A CASE AND REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

367PITUITARY ABSCESSES are rare lesions. In large series(1000 cases or more), it has been shown that pituitaryabscesses constitute .27 to .6% of all treated pituitarylesions [1,2]. Since its first description in 1914 by Sim-monds [3], 50 cases were reported until 1977 [4] andless than 100 cases have been reported since then (acomplete list of these publications less references citedin this article is available from the corresponding au-thor). Although early cases that correspond to the pre-antibiotic era were all autopsy cases [4], it is notewor-thy that there has been no report of death from thisdisease since 1992, which must be owing to increasedawareness of this entity and impact of ever-improvingdiagnostic modalities.The term pituitary abscess is not a synonym for a pi-tuitary adenoma abscess. Pituitary abscesses may be