[Current problems in the pathophysiology of the adrenal glands and its clinical importance]

In recent years new knowledge on the pathophysiolgy of the parathyroid gland has led to a series of not unimportant consequences for the endocrinological clinic. To this belongs the glandular translocation which under certain circumstances is regarded as favourable and the principal practicability so which is without any question. In certain, above all urologically conditioned clinical pictures with consecutive stimulation of the parathyroid secretion an inhibition effect on the parathyroid glands which can be evoked by drugs is discussed. Here the problem is a possibly significant preventive measure. The question of the maintained or disturbed euparathyroidism must be interesting in such cases, in which alone from the result of the conventional calcium-metabolic diagnostics an obligatory evidence remains questionable. Difficulties are above all in such cases, where the transitions of a functional adaption mechanism to an autonomized process with own laws may be present or it must be feared that the overloaded glandular function comes to an end. On the basis of own findings the authors adopt a definite attitude to these problems.