Fibrosarcoma after high energy radiation therapy for pituitary adenoma

Pituitary sarcoma is a rare late complication of radiotherapy for pituitary tumors. Although early case reports involved multiple courses of relatively low-energy radiation therapy, pituitary sarcoma has been seen with single courses of high-energy x-ray or heavy particle radiotherapy. This report describes a fibrosarcoma of the pituitary occurring 5 years after 4,500 rad (45 Gy) of x-irradiation delivered in 20 treatments over 3 weeks by an 8 MeV linear accelerator