Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Severe Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is defined by extremely high serum cortisol levels (usually >1000 nM), along with severe and deadly complications, including sepsis, heart failure, acute psychosis, vascular thrombosis, digestive haemorrhage and bowel perforation. Rapid control of such hypercortisolism is mandatory and has been shown to decrease operative mortality and complications. Oral treatments such as ketoconazole and metyrapone are often inadequate i...

Adrenal venous sampling (AVS) is considered as the gold standard test for primary aldosteronism (PA) subtype diagnosis. However, it is also an invasive and technically challenging procedure. In order to reduce the use of AVS, we propose a new score predicting a unilateral (UPA) or bilateral (BPA) form of PA using biological and radiological parameters. The score was retrospectively developed on a cohort of 72 patients who underwent AVS at the Cliniques Universitaires St-Luc Br...

Case: A 56-year-old patient was referred to our endocrinology unit for management of severe hypercalcemia. He had complained initially from asthenia, intractable nausea and vomiting and weight loss (10 kg), but now also suffered from polyuria-polydipsia, bradypsychia and bradylalia, and diffuse joint pain with loss of strength in the lower limbs. Initial laboratory investigations showed a parathyroid crisis with marked increases of parathyroid hormone (PTH) at 2138.5 pg/ml (45...