Endocrine Abstracts

Adrenal incidentalomas are increasingly recognised with the use of abdominal imaging with prevalence ranging from 0.35-0.45%. The vast majority of these are benign adrenocortical adenomas. Increasingly, subclinical hypercortisolism is recognised in such cases.We describe a case of a 34-year-old asymptomatic primigravida with chance recognition of an adrenal mass during an obstetric ultrasound. Biochemical testing revealed consistently normal urinary catecholamine and eleva...

Autoimmune hypophysitis is a rare disease with only 28 cases reported in UK so far. Subsequent pregnancy, especially after pituitary surgery, is even more rare. We report a 34-year-old lady who presented 5 weeks after the birth of her second child with visual loss and headache. Subsequent investigations revealed a pituitary macroadenoma with suprasellar extension and chiasmal compression. She underwent transphenoidal adenomectomy with complete recovery of vision. Preoperativel...

We evaluate the short and long-term outcomes following diagnosis and treatment of pituitary dependent Cushing’s disease from a single centre. From 1971, there were 47 patients with proven endogenous cortisol excess, of whom, 43 (92%) had pituitary dependent Cushing’s disease. The median age of this cohort was 38±11years and the majority (77%) were females. 17 patients had primary treatment either with radiotherapy (n=9), bilateral adrenalectomy (n=...

IntroductionHypercalcemia is a recognised feature of parathyroid and neoplastic disorders and similarly erythrocytosis is recognised in some benign and malignant neoplasm.Case reportA 71-year-old man presented to the admissions unit with an episode of collapse. No significant neurological or cardiovascular cause was identified. The results of his routine investigation revealed haemoglobin of 19.7g/dl and a ...

The 1997 working party recommendations for the management of patients with pituitary tumours suggest formal assessment by an endocrinologist prior to tertiary referral. We have examined the extent of endocrine assessment in such patients performed both by endocrine and non-endocrine specialists in a large district general hospital. Using ICD 9 & 10 coding records on patients discharged between 1993 and 2000, we identified 60 patients with pituitary pathology. Of these, 1...

Radioiodine therapy (RAI) is widely used as definitive treatment for hyperthyroidism. Of the several regimes in use, we have used a standard 555 MBq dose of RAI to treat all patients with hyperthyroidism. Treatment is considered to have failed if patients remain hyperthyroid at 12 months and a repeat 555 MBq dose is administered. We have studied 584 consecutive patients for failure rate of RAI when it is used according to this regime (mean follow-up 3 years (range 1-10)). We h...

A 45-year-old man presented with sudden onset left sided pleuritic chest pain and breathlessness. He was hypotensive and severely hypoxic and was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. A chest X-ray was normal and an urgent computerised tomographic (CT) pulmonary angiogram showed the presence of extensive pulmonary emboli. The CT scan also showed bilateral adrenal “incidentalomas” with the right one being 8 cm and the left 6 cm in its longest dimension. He responded we...