Vol 2 No 2 (2020)

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear colleagues!
All articles in the current issue of "Wiedzy Medyczna" were prepared by the team from Department of Endocrinology, Medical Centre of Postgraduate Education (CMKP), located in Bielański Hospital in Warsaw named after Jerzy Popiełuszko. The authors would like to dedicate this issue to their Hospital, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

This multidisciplinary hospital with 570 beds is an important element of health care for the residents of Warsaw and Mazovia as well as for the entire country. What is more, 2 national and 4 provincial consultants are also employed in this center. The Bielański Hospital plays an extremely important role in postgraduate education of doctors in Poland. There are nine CMKP Clinics and three Medical University of Warsaw Clinics located in here. The Department of Endocrinology which was founded in 1955 by professor Walenty Hartwig is operating in Bielański Hospital since its beginning, for 60 years now. At that time, it was the first unit of newly founded Physicians Training Center at the Medical Academy of Warsaw. It was subsequently transformed in 1970 to Medical Centre of Postgraduate Education (CMKP). The main role of this Institution is postgraduation doctors training. For almost 10 years our Clinic's team has been preparing an endocrinology issue published in "Postępy Nauk Medycznych".

Currently, we encourage the readers of "Wiedza Medyczna" to learn about the latest problems of modern endocrinology. The first two publications discuss the importance of vitamin D₃ for the proper immune system functioning. The opening publication presents the results of a pilot study conducted at the Bielański Hospital, which aim was to assess the effect of a single high dose administration of vitamin D₃ on the course of the hospitalization, taking into account the risk of nosocomial infections in the elderly. From the next two articles you can learn about modern methods of imaging and laboratory diagnostics of the most common endocrine diseases, such as thyroid disorders. In the next article, Jarosław Kozakowski mentions an important topic of the importance of growth hormone and growth factors in neoplasm and the related risk of cancer. Afterwards Piotr Dudek in his report draws attention to the so far underestimated problem of the depressive influence on the functions of the gonadal system in people professionally practicing sports. Another article is a part of the ongoing discussion of who should be examined for primary aldosteronism, the most common endocrine cause of hypertension and how to do it properly. The next two articles deal with the rarely perceived problem of postpartum depression. After reading them, we can obtain information on the practical management of this disease and the possibilities of modern pharmacotherapy. The article written by doctors dealing with diabetes in Bielański Hospital is also worth recommending. It presents the evolution of the diabetes classification published by WHO, with particular emphasis on its new categories - hybrid forms and unclassified diabetes. At the end of the current issue of "Wiedza Medyczna" there is a description of two rare cases of pregnancy in women treated for acromegaly. This problem is one of the elements of the dynamically developing National Register of Acromegaly, which is kept at the Department of Endocrinology, CMKP.

I hope that the works presented in this issue of "Wiedza Medyczna" will be interesting not only for endocrinologists, but also for doctors of other specialties, who encounter the interdisciplinary dimension of endocrinology in their clinical practice.

Wojciech Zgliczyński Prof. MD PhD
Department of Endocrinology,
Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education,
Bielański Hospital, Warsaw, Poland