Acromegaly

Diagnosis

Diagnosis involves the steps that your healthcare professional takes to find out if you have acromegaly. Your healthcare professional asks about your health history and does a physical exam. You also may need the following tests:

• IGF-1 measurement. This blood test measures the level of IGF-1 in your blood. A high IGF-1 level can mean that the level of growth hormone also is high. This can be a clue for acromegaly.
• Growth hormone suppression test. This blood test measures your growth hormone level before and after you drink a type of sugar water called glucose. In people who don’t have acromegaly, the glucose drink typically causes the growth hormone level to fall. But if you have acromegaly, your growth hormone level tends to stay high.
• Imaging tests. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can help pinpoint the location and size of a tumor in your pituitary gland. If no pituitary tumors are seen, you may need more imaging tests to look for other types of tumors. Your healthcare professional also may recommend X-rays of the hands and feet. These can help check for bone growth.

Treatment

Acromegaly treatment aims to improve symptoms and treat or prevent complications. The goal is to lower growth hormone and IGF-1 back to their proper levels and keep them there.

To help lower your growth hormone (GH) and IGF-1 levels, treatment options often include:

• Surgery to remove the tumor that’s causing symptoms. Most often, this is the first treatment for acromegaly that’s caused by a pituitary gland tumor.
• Medicine to help lower hormone levels. This is usually an option if surgery doesn’t bring down growth hormone to the right level.
• Radiation to shrink the size of the tumor. Often, this a treatment choice if surgery isn’t an option. It’s also an option if surgery can’t remove the whole tumor or if medicine doesn’t help enough.

Some people need a mix of these treatments. Your treatment plan depends on factors such as:

• The location and size of your tumor.
• How serious your symptoms are.
• Your age and overall health.

It’s common for some changes in physical features to improve with treatment. For example, swelling of soft tissue often goes down. And the skin often becomes less oily and coarse. But enlarged bones don’t return to the size that they used to be.

If you also have other health conditions due to acromegaly, you may need other treatments to manage them.