Endocrine Abstracts

The philosophy of my research over the years has been to ask clinically relevant questions which will enhance the practice of decision making in endocrinology, based on scientific assessment of reasonable cohorts. In hitherto unpublished data, we have done work on the assessment of somatostatin responsive headaches in acromegaly and show that they persist over many years, may respond to radiotherapy and may also remain problematic even if acromegaly is cured. We have also looked at a cohort of giants to see whether they present differently and have different complications. Lastly in as yet unpublished data, we have looked at disparate growth hormone and IGF-I in a cohort of patients taken from the UK Acromegaly Database to see whether this group has increased mortality and morbidity. In other work, we have shown the importance of pituitary surgical experience in improving outcome, the importance of debulking growth hormone secreting macroadenomas to improve long-term control with medical therapy, the natural history of non-operated non-functioning pituitary tumours and the indications for further treatment based upon post-operative scans in non-functioning tumours. In prolactinoma we have looked at pituitary functional recovery after treatment. We have done work on apoplexy showing the predictive factors for recovery and lastly shown the importance of various degrees of removal and likelihood of recurrence long-term. Research is accomplished with energy and enthusiasm. Good results are helped, as above, as well with warmth and lack of enmity.