Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Carcinoid tumors are rare and slow growing malignancies derived from enterochromaffin cells. Two-thirds of carcinoid tumors arise in the gastrointestinal tract, and in 3% of these cases the primary site cannot be determined. Presenting symptoms depend on the location of the primary tumor may be nonspecific and in 13% of patients distant metastases are discovered on diagnosis.Case presentation: A 64 years old woman was admitted for diffuse abd...

Introduction: Acromegaly is associated with an increased mortality in untreated patients. Recent papers suggest an improvement of survival in the last years.Aims: To assess mortality ratio and to identify prognostic factors associated with mortality in acromegaly in the last decade.Methods: 297 patients (186 F/111 M, mean age 49.8±0.7 years) with acromegaly admitted in a single Neuroendocrinology Department between Jan 2001 an...

Lanreotide has long been used in the therapy of GH secreting pituitary adenomas and other somatostatin receptor positive neuroendocrine tumors.Aims: To determine the impact on glucose metabolism of the 6 months of lanreotide therapy, beside of the antisecretory and antiproliferative effects.Patients and methods: Seven patients with active acromegaly treated with lanreotide, admitted in the Department of Neuroendocrinology, Institut...

Introduction: Acromegalic bone disease is characterized by an increased prevalence of fragility vertebral fractures (VFs). However, an effective, non-invasive and cost-efficient imaging technique that can diagnose early bone alterations in this category of patients is yet to found. The use of bone mineral density (BMD) is not as useful as in other causes of osteoporosis as excess GH leads to specific microarchitectural alteration of trabecular bone, which don’t translate ...

Introduction: RET proto-oncogene is situated on chromosome 10 and encodes a tyrosine kinase receptor. A germline mutation of RET leads to the appearance of MEN 2 syndrome or familial medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). One of the most common germline mutation occurs in codon 634. Pheochromocytoma penetrance for codon 634 mutation was demonstrated to increase with age up to 88% by age 77 years.Aim: To present two familial cases of RET mutation illustrating...

Introduction: Acromegaly has various complications that significantly alter patients’ lives, one of which is developing neoplasia, a subject of high interest in the scientific community during the last years but without any firm conclusions.Aim: The main objective of this paper was to verify if Romanian acromegalic patients are susceptible to developing neoplasia and what types of tumors are associated with acromegaly. Another purpose of the paper w...

Objective: Patients with pituitary macroadenomas and concomitant hypopituitarism have a reduced life expectancy due to various comorbidities.Aim: To investigate mortality in patients with non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFAs) and independent prognostic factors influencing survival.Design: Retrospective cohort study in a tertiary neuroendocrine university department.Methods: A total of 364 patients (177F/1...

Background: Thyroid nodules were reported with high prevalence in acromegalic patients.Patients and methods: 63 acromegalic patients (16 males and 47 females), aged at diagnosis 43.6±12.7 years were retrospectively reviewed. Median duration of acromegaly was 8 years. 25 patients were residents in iodine deficient areas. GH, IGF1, TSH, FT4 were measured by chemiluminescence (Liaison). Thyroid ultrasound was performed. In suspected nodules,...

Introduction: An improvement of survival in patients with acromegaly was claimed in the last years, with multimodal new therapies.Aims: To assess cure rates of different therapeutic protocols and the impact of these therapies on survival.Methods: 334 patients (224 F/110 M, mean age 48.1±0.7 years) with acromegaly admitted in a single Neuroendocrinology Department between Jan 2001 and Dec 2013 were retrospectively studied by GH...

Background: Suitable postoperative radiotherapy (RT) of nonfunctioning pituitary macroadenomas (NFMAs) is still controversial, subjected to rapid technical and medical progress.Patients and methods.: We studied 87 patients with NFMA to identify factors affecting tumor control such as the time of RT and tumor pathology. Partial pituitary surgery was performed either by transfrontal (30 patients) or transsphenoidal (57 patients) approach. An immunoperoxida...