Chapters Transcript Video Treating Pituitary Adenoma With Minimally Invasive Endoscopic Surgery My name is Felix Taverass. I am 64 years old. I have two kids. I am from the Dominican Republic. I am an immigration consultant and I like to travel. I love baseball. I love bachata, merengue, everything that the Dominicans, you know, really enjoy. I was traveling a lot, especially to New Jersey. So, and I was under a lot of pressure at work and things like that. So I started getting these headaches and then my blood pressure went up. It was very out of control. When I got back to Miami, uh, I mean, the first night was fine. I was checking on my blood pressure and then all of a sudden went up and I had a big headache. My daughter, you know, she comes. In and she said we've got to take you to the emergency. That's when I found out about the pituitary tumor. I never heard of that, so what was going on. And then it was a big thing because they say you need to go through surgery and that's when I decided to get a second opinion. When Felix came to us, he had actually already been diagnosed at another hospital because he came in with headaches and severe headaches, so they got a scan. Um, a CT scan and then an MRI which demonstrated a pituitary adenoma. What hadn't been done was the rest of the evaluation, you know, the full endocrine workup, the ophthalmology evaluation to test his vision, and that's where we came in. We helped establish that multidisciplinary team and then come up with a final decision making and surgical plan. Dr. Bander and the Baptist Health Miami Neuroscience Institute gave me the confidence. They were very. Very good. And then that's when I decided to trust them with my care. To understand what a pituitary adenoma is. First you need to understand that the pituitary gland sits at the back of our nose at the base of our skull, and it's responsible for all the hormone production in our body. There are a number of lesions that can occur in or around the pituitary gland, and pituitary adenomas are the most common type of tumor within the pituitary gland. Pituitary adenomas are benign tumors in more than 90% of cases. And they generally grow slowly if they grow at all, but larger tumors like what Felix had can cause compression of the optic nerves, which can lead to vision changes or vision loss. And in that case we do often recommend a surgery to remove that tumor and to decompress the optic. Nerves. When I first heard the diagnosis and I saw the tumor, uh, I was afraid it's dangerous to do it. Brain surgery, probably I'm not gonna make it. I was debating between let's just leave it like that. It hasn't bothered me or. This is a second chance for me to enjoy the rest of my life. The beauty of pituitary surgery in particular and minimally invasive surgery, which is what I subspecialize in, is that while it is brain surgery, we don't actually expose most of the brain in this endoscopic endonasal approach that we do for pituitary tumors. We actually go through the nose with an ENT surgeon and we do these cases together. We are able to reach the pituitary. Gland without actually affecting any of the brain around it and in Felix's case, he was able to undergo endoscopic endonasal surgery. He had no leak. He recovered very well from surgery. Patients can go home very quickly after these surgeries because they are minimally invasive. After the surgery, it took me around 60 days for me to go back to do some normal things like traveling. Like going back to work, I am probably 200% better now. Felix, I think, is doing amazing today. He's very happy with the care that he got with us, and I think he's gone back to his normal life, and that's what I think is really important for patients is to get back to their normal life. And to live as if this was never really even happened to them. I'm excited. I'm traveling. I'm going places and and I want to share this because this was a big thing for me and my family and then you got to take care of yourself and you got to go to the right place. Created by
