Scintigraphic diagnosis of subclinical Cushing's Syndrome in patients with adrenal incidentalomas

Adrenal scintigraphy has been shown to be a useful procedure for the characterization of incidentally discovered adrenal tumours. The functional evaluation of these patients is controversial. This paper describes the biochemical and pathological findings in five patients with asymptomatic adrenal masses and unilateral concordant adrenocortical scintigraphic uptake. All the patients were diagnosed as having subclinical Cushing's Syndrome, without clinical or biochemical adrenocortical dysfunction. Scintigraphy is the most sensitive method for detecting an adrenal adenoma in the subclinical setting when the disease is not yet demonstrable by biochemical methods.