Adrenal Venous Sampling in Patients With Overt or Subclinical Cushings Syndrome, and Bilateral Adrenal Tumors

Adrenal incidentalomas are quite common. About 4 % of the population have adrenal tumors that they are unknown of. Some percentage of this patients produce a little to much cortisol, but not enough to give overt Cushings syndrome. It is shown that slightly elevated cortisol production will give higher blood pressure, higher blood sugar and maybe higher BMI. For another hormone produced in the adrenal glands , aldosterone, we know that even if you have an adrenal tumor on one adrenal, you could have bilateral overproduction of the hormone.In that situations it is no need of an operation of the adrenal with the tumor. When the overproduction is unilateral it is of great value to the patient to operate the adrenal gland, and the symptoms from the hormone excess will disappear. For aldosterone Adrenal venous sampling (AVS) has been used for several years to try to determine if the hormone overproduction is one-sided or to sided. We are in this study using the same principle for cortisol overproduction.