Endocrine Abstracts

We have come a long way in the UK over the past ten years towards our goal of meeting the educational needs of nurses specialising in adult endocrinology. Endocrine nurses are now able to access annual training updates and attend specific nurse-led sessions at scientific meetings thanks to the ongoing work undertaken by the Society for Endocrinology’s nurse committee.It is therefore time to turn our attention to how we can encourage nurses to want t...

The low incidence of acromegaly makes it difficult for any individual centre to gather prospective data on a large enough series of patients to enable satisfactory epidemiological and other research to take place. In 1998, eight centres agreed to set up a collaborative database with a view to accumulating a major series covering the main treatment centres. The project has now been active for several years and there are currently seventeen participating centres. Any centre that...

The Pituitary Foundation was founded in 1994 when a group of endocrinologists, GPs and patients identified the need for a support group for patients with pituitary disease. Charitable status followed in 1996. It's core aims are to provide support to patients, their families and carers, to act as a source of reliable information and to increase awareness of the Foundation and pituitary disease within the medical profession and the general public. Membership, services and public...

The UK Acromegaly Register was established in 1997 and holds data on patients with acromegaly from 17 centres in the UK. Of 1466 records, 431 (29%) were diagnosed pre-1984, 580 (40%) between 1984 and 1993 and 455 (31%) between 1994 and 2003.Surgery was and remains the most frequently applied primary treatment for acromegaly: 46% of cases pre-1984, 53% 1994-2003. The proportion treated by surgery alone has risen from 16% to 28% in 1994 to 2003 (P<1x10-...

AIMS: The Pituitary Foundation (a national UK Support Group)undertook a questionnaire of its members to solicit patients' views on their experience of growth hormone replacement (GHR). This resulted in a lay submission to NICE regarding GHR in adults.METHOD: A questionnaire was mailed to members known to be receiving GHR. 78% of these (303) were returned. In addition, a further 86 completed questionnaires were received following a...

Background: National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines for the use of Growth Hormone (GH) replacement in adults with GH deficiency (GHD) were published in 2003, and subsequently ratified for use in Scotland.Aim: To identify all adults in Scotland currently receiving GH and to assess whether they meet the NICE criteria for starting and continuing GH replacement.Methods: All endocrinologists in Scotland were surveye...