Posted by noa on December 12, 2003, at 20:21:24
In reply to Re: hypothyroidism » noa, posted by katia on December 11, 2003, at 15:17:42
Originally, my pdoc had me get a TSH and several other thyroid tests. He diagnosed me as having "subclinical" hypothyroidism, based on a borderline TSH (I think it was 4.5 vs. a normal lab range of 5).
Then, as I experienced more hypothyroid symptoms, I also started reading about it. This prompted me to decide to see an endocrinologist who diagnosed the hypothyroidism, with different criteria of what is normal vs. abnormal than the simple TSH criteria. He did an exam and other thyroid blood tests, and he gave symptoms a lot of weight in the diagnosis, too.
Since then, the criteria for normal TSH have been changed, and the idea of treating people with lower TSH who have symptoms is becoming more accepted. But at the time (only about 4 years ago), I felt very lucky to have this endo, because most docs were relying heavily on the statistical norms for the TSH test.
poster:noa
thread:288048
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031208/msgs/289246.html