Thyroid hypofunction in spinal cord injury patients

Our experience in the screening and detection of hypothyroidism in 225 spinal injury patients is described. Clinical features compatible with hypothyroidism are frequently encountered in these patients and require thyroid function testing to exclude or confirm thyroid hypofunction. Two cases of hypothyroidism, equivocal on clinical grounds alone, were first detected by a low value in screening tests for serum thyroxine levels and subsequently confirmed by a high serum TSH level. Low serum triiodiothyronine level is frequently found in apparently euthyroid patients with tetraplegia and is necessarily not an indicator of clinical hypothyroidism in these patients.