[The determination of calcitonin for hospital use (author's transl)]

The significance of measuring calcitonin by biological and radioimmunological methods for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes is demonstrated in 18 cases of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). The radioimmunoassay used permits the differentiation between normals (up to 0.5 ng/ml) and patients with MTC (3 to 120 ng/ml). As clinical symptomatology is often unspecific (tumor of the neck, perhaps in combination with diarrhea), the determination of calcitonin proved to be a useful preoperative diagnostic tool which can be improved by calcitonin stimulation tests (pentagastrin i.v.). Calcitonin values provide information on the completeness of surgical procedures or the recurrence of the tumor before clinical symptoms are manifest.