Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Short synacthen test is used to assess adrenal function by injecting 250 μg of synacthen (tetracosactide) and measuring cortisol at baseline and subsequently after 30 and 60 min of the injection. In our hospital the cut-off for a normal test is a peak cortisol of 480 nmol/l or an increment of 200 or more from the baseline value.Methodology: We reviewed the results of 50 short synacthen tests performed in our hospital within the last year...

TSH receptor antibodies (TRAB) are now routinely measured in patients with Graves’ disease (GD) to aid diagnosis. Thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPO) sometimes co-exist in these patients but not always. Some studies have suggested a functional and prognostic role for these antibodies. However, the phenotypic characteristics of the patient with positive TPO (with or without TRAB) and the influence of TPO on the clinical course of GD are not known.A r...

Hypopituitarism is a recognised complication of pituitary and hypothalamic pathology. It can also be a consequence, less commonly, of traumatic brain injury. It has never been described in patients following recovery from a cardiac arrest. We present a case history of hypopituitarism following successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation for a ventricular tachycardia (VT) cardiac arrest. A 51 year old patient with known prolonged QT (Romano ward) syndrome and chronic obstructive a...

Introduction: The symptoms and signs of thyroid disease can be subtle and non-specific resulting in the indiscriminate use of thyroid function tests (TFT) for diagnosis. The resulting rise in the number of TFTs has raised issues about cost–effectiveness of such a practice. We set out to identify whether using specific clinical indications was an effective way to identify patients with abnormal TFTs and to determine any demographic data that would support unrestricted TFT ...

Widespread use of CT and MRI scan has led to the identification of incidental adrenal tumours. The need to determine functionality often results in a battery of investigations that are a drain to scarce resources and are frequently normal. Studies to identify tumour radiological features that suggest functionality and hence enable targeted investigations are few in the literature. To this effect we set out to analyse which features on imaging that are best predictive of functi...