7th Hammersmith Multidisciplinary Endocrine Symposium event report

Prof Will Drake delivers his lecture on difficult thyroid cases

This annual meeting brings together trainees and consultants from all specialties who manage complex endocrine patients in multidisciplinary teams.

This annual meeting brings together trainees and consultants from all specialties who manage complex endocrine patients in multidisciplinary teams, so that they can share best practice and discuss difficult cases. The 190 delegates included 80 patients with pituitary disease and 10 patients with MEN who attended the main meeting and the parallel sessions specifically designed for them. In addition, this is an important focus for the medical students on the Endocrinology BSc pathway in year 4, who are involved both in marking the quality of the posters, and as fully paid up delegates.

The conference has a dedicated website (http://metmed.info) that links into the Imperial Centre for Endocrinology (ICE) and the abstracts from the meeting have been published for several years.

The previous meeting had a strong thyroid emphasis. The audience were updated in the recent advances of thyroid ultrasound by Dr Chris Harvey (Hammersmith Hospital) and current surgical strategy in differentiated thyroid cancer by Mr David Scott-Coombes (Wales). The potential side effects of suppressive doses of thyroxine in patients with thyroid cancer were reviewed by Dr Stephen Robinson, St Mary’s Hospital. Prof Will Drake (St Bartholomew’s Hospital) educated the audience with some excellent thyroid case discussions with the use of interactive clickers. This was followed by trainees presenting some interesting thyroid cases with input from the audience.  This was followed by the Society for Endocrinology International Seminar by Prof Anders Bergenfelz (Sweden) who gave a thought provoking lecture on the complications of thyroid surgery in the elderly.

Poster presentations

The Society supported a prize for the best poster which was awarded to Dr Ian Seetho (Derby). The afternoon session started with Dr Jeremy Cox (St Marys Hospital) reviewing who needs genetic testing for primary hyperparathyroidism. Following some excellent neuroendocrine tumour case based discussions the audience were treated to a fascinating lecture on familial pituitary tumours by Prof Marta Korbonits (St Bartholomew’s Hospital) – did you know that up to 7% of your pituitary patients are likely to have familial disease? Mr Fausto Palazzo (Hammersmith Hospital) then concluded the meeting by showing the audience that via a retroperitoneoscopic approach that the adrenal gland can be accessed in 1 minute 39 seconds and patients having a rapid recovery with discharge usually within 24 hours.  You can enjoy all the abstracts online at (http://metmed.info). The meeting was generously supported by a Society for Endocrinology Sponsored Seminar grant. The Society also sent through some blue T-shirts with large white lettering stating ‘Endocrinologists do it with hormones’ – these proved immensely popular and the 50 T-shirts disappeared within minutes!

Meeting in 2013

Preparations are underway for the 8th Hammersmith Endocrine Symposium will take place on 6 December 2013.