About MES 2011

radiotherapy options now available for patients with pituitary tumours and this was followed by interactive case discussions with the use of interactive clickers to vote for particular options and roving microphones. 

The theme then changed to discuss the controversies in the management of patients with hyperparathyroidism. Following a fascinating case that illustrated the difficulties of some hyperparathyroid patients presented by Dr Matthew Oldfield (Kingston Hospital) Dr Channa Jayasena and Prof Karim Meeran (Hammersmith Hospital) gave an entertaining interactive presentation regarding the pitfalls in the diagnosis of primary hyperparathyroidism. This was followed by a lengthy discussion on the question of ‘To D or not to D – should we replace vitamin D when managing patients with primary hyperparathyroidism?’ with expert advice from specialists in the audience – the overall consensus was ‘yes’. An important addition to this year’s meeting were 2 presentations from medical students who had undertaken a BSc in Endocrinology and presented their project work. There were many experts in the audience and both Jeremy Cox and James Ahlquist added vastly to the discussion. This was followed by the Society for Endocrinology Seminar by Prof Zyg Krukowski (Aberdeen) who demonstrated typical surgical grit in fighting through the gales and heavy rains that closed most of Scotland’s airports bridges and roads to make it to the meeting! Despite sleep deprivation he gave an excellent pragmatic and comprehensive overview of the evidence for parathyroid surgery in hyperparathyroidism.