Treatment control and personal understanding of the
disease were worse in patients after a longer duration of
follow-up. We speculate that patients after longer duration
of follow-up have less desire to have personal
control over their acromegaly compared with patients
with a shorter duration of follow-up. It might also be
that longer follow-up of acromegaly indicated (at least
for the patient) that acromegaly is a severe and chronic
illness, which leads to less treatment control because
patients feel the treatment they received did not cure
acromegaly and also leads to less personal understanding
because the doctors cannot cure acromegaly and/or
its (long-term) symptoms.