Pheochromocytoma - a good-quality or malignant tumour of a chromaffin tissue of adrenals or extraadrenal localization.

Pathogenesis. Superfluous development of catecholamins (an adrenaline, Noradrenalinum).

Signs. Crisises with sharp rising arterial pressure in a combination to nervous mental, endocrine metabolic, gastric both intestinal and hematological signs are characteristic. During an attack the clinic reminds a symptomatology of a crisis: there is a feeling of pavor, anxiety, a shiver, a cold fit, paleness of integuments, a headache, a pain behind a breast bone, in the field of heart, a tachycardia, a nausea, a vomiting, a fervescence, a sweating, dryness in a mouth.

The attack comes to the end with a polyuria. Duration of a crisis from several minutes till several o'clock. The crisis can become complicated a retinal apoplexy of an eye, disturbance of a cerebral circulation, a fluid lungs. Attacks arise, as a rule, suddenly and can be provoked by emotional stress, a physical strain, a palpation of a tumour, sharp change of position of a body. At the stable form of disease constantly high hypertensia is marked, disturbances of a functional condition of kidneys, changes of an eyeground are possible. Hypererethism, lability of mood, fatigability, a headache are observed. At a malignant tumour - a pheochromoblastoma - abdominal pains are frequent growing thin. Development of a diabetes mellitis is possible.