Exploring Reasons for the Underdiagnosis of Hypercortisolism
Panelists discuss how hypercortisolism presents with both overt symptoms like central obesity, muscle wasting, easy bruising, purple striae, moon face, and buffalo hump, as well as nonspecific features including weight gain, resistant hyperglycemia, severe hypertension, dyslipidemia, osteoporosis, and psychiatric disorders, explaining that these overlapping symptoms with common chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension often mask the underlying condition, leading to underdiagnosis as clinicians focus on adding more medications rather than investigating potential underlying causes, while the disease's perceived rarity in medical education further contributes to missed diagnoses despite hypercortisolism being more prevalent than previously thought.