Abstract

Objective: Patient characteristics and disease distribution is variable regarding children who have been referred to pediatric endocrinology clinics, possibly due to the sociodemographic properties of the population being served. Therefore determination of certain characteristics of patients will lead to improved outpatient services and will help to define the context of local education programs for pediatricians. In this study, our aim was not only to define certain characteristics of the population who are referred our pediatric endocrinology clinic but our applications as well.Patients and methods: In this cohort, 480 children who have been admitted to pediatric endocrinology department of our hospital between 01 April - 30 June 2010 were retrospectively reviewed. Complaints of the patients , the source of knowledge about pediatric endocrinology, the elapsed time between admission and examination and the parents’ socio-demographic characteristics were assessed with standard questionnaires. Their final diagnoses after six months of follow up were recorded.

Results: Of the 480 admissions, 218 (45.4%) were male, 262 (54.6%) were female, and the mean age was 8.4 ± 4.8 years (between 0-24 years). The most common causes of applications admissions were short stature (19.6%), being overweight (18.8%), anxiety about precocious puberty (18.8%), and suspicion of thyroid disease (16.6%). Most children were referred by health care professionals (89.1%), especially by pediatricians (74.6%). A hundred and ten (22.9%) of admissions had no detected endocrine abnormality after six months of follow up. The distribution of patients who had an endocrine pathology was as follows: 95 patients (25.7%) had obesity, 71 (19.2%) had growth retardation and short stature, 70 (18.9%) had pubertal disorders, 47 (12.7%) had thyroid gland diseases and 24 (6.5%) had disorders of bone metabolism.

Conclusions: Short stature, obesity, suspicion of precocious puberty and thyroid disease made up of about three quarters of admissions of pediatric endocrinology outpatient clinic. In this study, approximately one fifth of children who had been referred by a health professional had no endocrine disorder. The most common compliant was short stature, and obesity was the most frequent endocrine disease in our patient group

Keywords: Pediatric endocrinology, referral, obesity, short stature, pubertal disorders

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How to cite

1.
Esen İ, Demirel F, Tepe D, Demir B. CHARACTERISTICS OF PATIENTS WHO REFERRED TO A PEDIATRIC ENDOCRINOLOGY OUTPATIENT CLINIC. Turk J Pediatr Dis [Internet]. 2011 Jun. 1 [cited 2025 May 24];5(3):133-8. Available from: https://turkjpediatrdis.org/article/view/146