Hyperthyroidism In Children Research Articles

HYPERTHYROIDISM IN CHILDREN

Hyperthyroidism in children is a rather rare disease. Occasionally a single case is reported, but most of the cases have been reported from the larger clinics. Dinsmore 1 of the Cleveland Clinic reported forty-eight cases in patients ranging up to 17 years of age, while Helmholz 2 reported thirty from the Mayo Clinic. Greene and Mora 3 from Richter's service reported twenty-six cases in their series, the ages ranging from 8 to 16 years inclusive. This represented 2.1 per cent of their 1,200 consecutive cases that came to operation. Twenty-two of these patients were girls and four were boys. One child, a girl, was 8 years old, two were 11, and one was 12; the rest of the patients were fairly evenly scattered over the next four year period. Cowden, reviewing the literature in 1923, found no case of hyperthyroidism in a boy under 10 years of age. The symptoms

Hyperthyroidism in children: Review of fifty-seven cases: R. S. Dinsmore. J. A. M. A. 99: 8, 1932

Hyperthyroidism in children: Review of fifty-seven cases: R. S. Dinsmore. J. A. M. A. 99: 8, 1932

HYPERTHYROIDISM IN CHILDREN

During the past few years, my associates and I have seen at the Cleveland Clinic a number of cases of hyperthyroidism in children. Although formerly it was thought that hyperthyroidism in children under 14 years of age occurred but rarely, our experience has led us to believe that this disease is not as uncommon as is generally supposed. is not within the province of this paper to review the various theories and hypotheses regarding the etiology of hyperthyroidism that have been presented, nor to review the bibliography that was so adequately covered by Helmholz 1 at the meeting of this association at Dallas, Texas, in 1926. Means, 2 however, has discussed the two most prevalent views of Marine and of Plummer adequately and briefly, and has made the following pertinent statement: It is evident that no one knows the primary cause of hyperthyroidism although there are those who believe

THYROTOXICOSIS IN CHILDHOOD

In 1851, more than half a century after Parry1had recorded the first authentic case of exophthalmic goiter in the adult, Romberg and Henoch2were the first to report a case in a child, aged 14. Almost half a century later, in 1896 and 1897, Steiner,3in a comprehensive study of exophthalmic goiter in childhood, was able to collect from the literature only thirty-one cases in children less than 15 years of age. On consulting Sattler,4 when one learns that 1,391 contributions on exophthalmic goiter had appeared before the date of Steiner's publication, one obtains a vivid and graphic impression of the excessive rarity of exophthalmic goiter in childhood as reflected in the medical literature at the close of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, this impression of the excessive rarity of thyrotoxicosis in childhood, which is being continually emphasized in the medical literature, is no longer entirely in

Hyperthyroidism in children. Dinsmorc (Surg., gyn., a. obst., 1926, no. 2)

If before hyperthyroidism in children was considered very rare, now, in the opinion of the author, this interesting and often severe disease should be recognized as more frequent. Usually this disease follows some infectious disease of a child, appears suddenly and develops rapidly.

EXOPHTHALMIC GOITER IN CHILDHOOD

Exophthalmic goiter is an extremely rare condition in early childhood, but becomes more common with the approach of puberty. Plummer1recognizes two types of hyperthyroidism in adults, exophthalmic goiter and adenomatous goiter with hyperthyroidism. The latter is rarely found in persons tinder 25 years of age, and has never been recorded occurring in childhood. Plummer conceives of the clinicophysiologic complex of exophthalmic goiter as that following the administration of thyroxin, or that associated with hyperfunctioning adenomatous thyroid plus certain notable characteristic findings that can be grouped ocular symptoms, the characteristic nervous phenomena, and the tendency to crises which may terminate in death. According to this conception, exophthalmic goiter and hyperthyroidism in children denote the same condition, although some observers have considered them separate entities. From the study of the metabolic rate in children with exophthalmic goiter, it has been learned that the severity of the ocular