Ashley Shoemaker, MD, an endocrinologist, explains how doctors evaluate hypothalamic injury and the signs that may point to HO.
Transcript
So we don’t have any great laboratory tests to recognize hypothalamic injury.
The best things that we’re able to do is look at damage to that pituitary gland because it’s located nearby. So the vast majority of patients with a hypothalamic injury will also have an injury to their pituitary.
Not only is it located nearby, but the hypothalamus has some control over the pituitary gland.
So we typically are testing for pituitary deficiencies, especially things like vasopressin deficiency, or sometimes called diabetes insipidus, as well as other hormone problems.
So thyroid deficiencies, adrenal insufficiency, growth hormone deficiencies, if those are present, it raises suspicion that there could be hypothalamic injury.
And then we also look for things like changes in blood pressure or body temperature or heart rate, since those are controlled by the hypothalamus and can be a sign that it is not working normally.
