thyroid doctor

A:FACS=Fellow American College of Surgeons. Maybe you need a 2nd round with original Dr. to explain.

A:endocrinologist

A:Your thyroid gland (in your neck) produces a hormone called thyroxine (aka T4). Your pituitary gland (in your head, just underneath your brain produces a hormone called thyroid-stimulating hormone (aka TSH). Sometimes a person's thyroid stops working, so the level of T4 in the blood falls, because it is not secreting enough. When this happens, the pituitary gland releases lots of TSH to 'nag' the thyroid - to try and encourage it to make more T4. So if a doctor does a blood test and sees low T4 with high TSH, they think "oh, the thyroid is not working". In your case, it seems like the doctor saw low T4 and also normal or low TSH. So he/she is wondering - if the T4 is low, why isn't the pituitary responding by releasing more TSH? Could there be something wrong with the pituitary, instead of the thyroid? Perhaps the thyroid is fine and the pituitary has stopped stimulating it. So your doc has ordered a scan to look at the pituitary. I'm guessing you'll have to have some more blood tests to look for other hormones that the pituitary should be making. This doesn't automatically mean there is definitely something wrong with the pituitary - a lot of people have slightly odd thyroid test results and it means nothing. Genuine pituitary problems are rare, but they often get missed, so doctors are a bit jumpy when there is even a slight suspicion of it.

A:lymph glands trap foreign bodies and cause lymph nodes to form nodules, mostly in the neck area.

A:After I-131 radioablative therapy for a thyroid pathology, if serologic levels indicate that their is some functional tissue, your physician may opt to place you on methimazole instead of subjecting you to more I-131 therapy.