Brief Answer: May not necessarily need to be removed! Detailed Answer: Hi and thank you so much for this query. I am so sorry to hear about this mass and all the troubling thoughts that this has caused you. Not all adrenal masses need to be removed. Unless it is active or malignant or poses a direct threat to surrounding organs or causes severe symptoms, there is no point in removing them. This is even more true when they are discovered during examinations for other disease conditions. It is different from other masses that always need to be removed. You must have enough justifications to remove an adrenal mass before you do. A mass and a tumor are grossly same and can be used interchangeably. The most important thing to do at this time is to evaluate this mass using imaging studies and hormonal assays. Should it be an active tumor/mass secreting hormones, then it would be taken out. If the characteristics on imaging are suggestive of a cancer, it would be taken out. If none of this is so distinct, then more investigations and reflection would need to be done in order to make the decision to take out or not. In all, it needs ore information to tell whether it would be removed or not. For now, focus on getting th complete laboratory and imaging studies going. The decision to remove or not would be reached at at the end of the investigations. I ope this helps. I wish you well.Thank you so much for using our services and do feel free to ask for clarifications and more information if need be. Dr. Ditah, MD.

---