Endocrine Abstracts

We report the use of Gamma knife radiosurgery (GK) to 15 somatotroph adenomas. Eight patients had refractory acromegaly despite maximal conventional treatments: all had undergone conventional radiotherapy (CRT), mean interval between CRT and GK 15.6 years. Six had undergone surgery, two on more than one occasion. Five were receiving somatostatin analog therapy, one was receiving dopamine agonist therapy, one was on pegvisomant alone. All had radiologically defined disease, wel...

Introduction: Diagnosis of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) is often a challenge and involves biochemical characterisation and anatomic localisation of the tumour. Wherever feasible, curative surgical excision is the treatment of choice.Materials and Methods: Twenty four consecutive patients with pancreatic NETs were referred for consideration of surgery over a six-year period (1999–2005). Following use of multi imaging modalities to localis...

The effect of growth hormone (GH) replacement on thyroid function in hypopituitary patients has only been studied in small groups of children and adults with conflicting results.We aimed to define the effect and clinical significance of adult GH replacement on thyroid status in a large cohort of 243 patients with hypopituitarism due to various causes. 84 patients were considered euthyroid before GH treatment and 159 patients had central hypothyroidism an...

Introduction: Patients with acromegaly have an increased risk of colorectal cancer and pre-malignant adenomatous polyps; however the frequency of colonoscopic screening remains unclear.Aims: To determine optimum frequency for repeated colonoscopy of acromegalic patients.Methods: Since 1992, 254 patients (mean age 56.6 years) at our centre have undergone at least one fibre-optic colonoscopic surveillance; 156, 60 and 15 patients hav...

Differentiating aldosterone-producing adenomas (APA) from bilateral adrenal hyperplasia (BAH) as a cause of Conn’s syndrome (CS) is crucial for appropriate management. We have prospectively evaluated the relative contributions of PST, adrenal imaging by Computed Tomography (CT) and AVS in the differential diagnosis of CS.We investigated 25 consecutive patients with CS referred to our unit with an identical protocol. Every patient underwent PST, CT a...

The preparation of Sandostatin LAR® injections using a 2 ml ampoule of vehicle solution may be associated with some technical difficulties of administration, with adverse consequences for patients. The development of a 2.5 ml prefilled syringe may alleviate some of these problems. We have compared these two methods of Sandostatin LAR® administration in 17 patients with acromegaly and 5 patients with neuro-endocrine tumours, (6 drug naïve, 1...

Background: Mutations in succinate dehydrogense-B (SDH-B) or von Hippel Lindau (VHL) genes can result in chromaffin tumours.Objective: To compare the clinical phenotypes of subjects developing chromaffin tumours as a result of SDH-B or VHL mutations.Subjects: Thirty-one subjects with chromaffin tumours. Sixteen subjects had SDH-B gene mutations and 15 subjects had a diagnosis of VHL.<p ...