Although children are accident-prone, and often suffer severe traumatic lesions of the head, posttraumatic anterior pituitary failure has rarely been reported in them1 or in adults.2 In most of the reported cases, years passed between the onset of the disease and its diagnosis, apparently because of the difficulty in differentiating between the clinical symptoms that resulted from the severe head
injury and those related to the hypopituitarism.3
We studied an 18-year-old adolescent with pituitary failure that was diagnosed two years after a severe head trauma.
Report of a Case.—The patient suffered a severe accident at the age of 16 years while riding a horse. He was admitted to the hospital in a deep coma, with rhinorrhea and otorrhea. Skull roentgenogram revealed a fracture of the base of the skull. Several days later, left-sided hemiparesis developed. During the following days, his consciousness improved gradually, and he was