Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Male osteoporosis is undermanaged. The characteristics of men referring to health care system for bone evaluation remain partially unknown.Aim: To characterize from real-life data male patients seeking the first bone health evaluation at a tertiary academic medical center, referral for both andrological and bone diseases, over a 13-year observation period.Methods: Retrospective, cross-sectional study, including adult me...

Background: Multidisciplinary approach to pituitary disease is highly recommended; it requires a close relationship between expert pituitary surgeons and endocrinologists together with several specialists (e.g. neuroradiologists) in order to provide a high-level standard of care. Although there is evidence that neurosurgeons’ expertise is a key element to achieve better outcomes, also endocrinologists’ role is fundamental but it may sometimes encounter real-life barr...

Background and aim of the study: Several ultrasound (US) classifications for estimating thyroid nodules risk have been proposed. Since most of them are hardly applicable in clinical practice, we created a local tool, named Modena classification (MC), considering US characteristics and clinician subjective impression. The aim is to verify the diagnostic accuracy of MC and to compare it to US classifications of American Thyroid Association(ATA) (1) and British Thyroid Associatio...

Background: PHPT is often overlooked/underdiagnosed. Several strategies (biochemical markers alone or combined in complex algorithms) have been investigated to easily diagnose/screen PHPT, but PHPT diagnosis remains challenging at present, especially in asymptomatic patients. As serum calcium (Ca) and phosphorous (P) are inversely related in PHPT, the Ca/P ratio could be a good candidate tool for PHPT diagnosis. Surprisingly, no literature data on Ca/P ratio are available, des...

Background: Screening serum calcitonin (sCT) measurement in patients with thyroid nodules is still debated. Moreover, sCt cutoffs for medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) are not univocally defined. Also, sensitivity of cytology by fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAb) has been demonstrated to detect approximately half of MTCs. Ct measurement in fine-needle aspiration washout fluid (Ct-FNAb) has high sensitivity and specificity and is helpful in case of non-diagnostic cytology&#18...

Introduction: Serum Ct is considered the most sensitive tool for MTC screening, but with poor specificity. Pg-test sensitivity and specificity are high, but doubtful for 30–100 pg/ml of Ct peak. FNAB is not routinely used due to its very low sensitivity and specificity. Only few studies from a small number of patients are available on the role of Ct measurement in the wash-out fluid (Ct-FNAB) for MTC diagnosis, providing conflicting results.Aim of t...

Introduction: In order to study the effect of age and testosterone on sleep related erections, we enrolled 209 men (122: age 30–49 years; 87: age over 50 years), including mild and severe hypogonadal subjects (129) and eugonadal subjects (80).Subjects and methods: The subjects were assigned to four groups, according to their testosterone serum levels. All the subjects underwent nocturnal penile tumescence and rigidity monitoring (NPTRM). The followi...

Background: Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is the third most common endocrine disorder. The Ca/P ratio is an accurate tool to differentiate patients with PHPT (>3.5 if Ca and P are expressed in mg/dl) from healthy subjects [1]. The reliability of this index is based on the fact that serum Ca and P are inversely related together. However, other disorders of the Ca-P metabolism, such as hypophosphoremia (HypoP), might impair the Ca/P ratio.Aim: To ...

Background: The diagnosis of PHPT and chronic HypoPT is still challenging, mainly due to the wide spectrum of clinical and biochemical presentation and the lack of validated diagnostic index in literature. The serum Ca/P ratio has been proposed as an accurate tool to diagnose PHPT in a small sample of patients, while no data is available about its possible application for HypoPT.Aim: To validate the serum Ca/P ratio as a diagnostic index for PHPT and to ...

Background and aim: Several ultrasound (US) classifications for thyroid nodules have been proposed. Since most of them are hardly applicable in clinical practice, we set up the Modena US Thyroid Classification (MUT) that stratifies the risk of malignancy considering both knowledge derived from scientific literature and clinician subjective impression. The aim of the present study was to test the diagnostic accuracy of different thyroid US classification systems, AACE/ACE-AME, ...