Via practica 4/2009

Thyropathies in general practitioner’s office, or how to manage their current „epidemic“?

Despite eradication of endemic goitre thyropathies have remained and will be the most frequent endocrinopathies. Technical development in medicine enabled to diagnose subclinical and clinically insignificant findings and created new „epidemic“ of thyropathies. This has brought interpretational, differential diagnostic and organizational problems for general practitioners and endocrinologists not only in our country, but also in all technically and medically developed countries. Marked increase of revealed subclinical thyropathies has caused an overload of out patient departments of endocrinology, which is reflecting in prolonged waiting periods for examination and in discontent of patients. Author tries to propose a way to manage this „epidemic“ effectively and quietly. The essence of this way is a differentiated approach to thyropathies according to their severity and an adequate instruction (calming) of patients with clinically insignificant findings.

Keywords: technical development in medicine, subclinical thyropathies, epidemic, management, differentiated approach, severity stratification