In medicine, the difficult cases can yield valuable insights because they force physicians to think a little harder when making a diagnosis and to be creative when treating the patient. In Challenging Cases in Endocrinology, distinguished clinician-scientists describe in concise studies their most difficult cases and reveal what they did, how they did it, and why. The cases cover a wide range of medical problems, including pituitary and thyroid tumors, hypopituitarism, hyper- and hypothyroidism, metabolic bone disease, Cushing's syndrome, adrenal insufficiency and cancer, diabetes, and hypoglycemia. Other cases involve disorders of female reproduction, of water balance and lipoprotein metabolism, of puberty, and of growth and development. Each case study reviews how the patient was managed, details the reasons why various tests and treatments-many only recently available-were carried out, and provides references to ensure that these novel methodologies can be easily translated into the endocrine specialist's daily practice. Along the way, the authors provide practical solutions for these difficult-to-manage cases, and successfully apply knowledge fresh from the laboratory to decisions about patient management.
Practical and highly stimulating, Challenging Cases in Endocrinology demonstrates for every clinical endocrinologist precisely how specialists approach their most challenging cases and how these approaches can be effectively applied in the daily practice of endocrinology.