Endocrine Abstracts

Thyroid eye disease (TED), or Graves’ orbitopathy, is a common manifestation of autoimmune thyroid disease, affecting up to 30% of patients. Prompt identification of the development of TED is often difficult as the underlying inflammation of the orbital tissues and can lead to a wide range of symptoms and signs.

These include extraocular muscle fibrosis leading to diplopia, orbital congestion leading to optic nerve compression and lid retraction leading to corneal exposure. In addition, orbital fat hypertrophy and hyaluronic acid deposition can lead to periocular puffiness and significant disfigurement. Increased orbital pressure can also lead to glaucoma and chronic ocular surface irritation can be the underlying cause of periocular dystonias.

This wide variety of clinical phenotypes along with the inadequate correlation between current clinical scoring systems and disease activity can often make TED difficult to identify in the early stages. This can lead to delays in referral with significant patient morbidity.

In addition, the recent expansion of multicenter clinical trials programmes across the UK require patient with active TED for recruitment.

This lecture will focus on the different clinical presentations of TED to ensure that referral can be made in appropriate time. An up-to-date overview of the research landscape for TED trials in the UK will also be discussed.