We often find slightly elevated urine adrenaline and noradrenaline in
patients who are under investigation for pheochromocytoma but do not have
this condition. Usually the drug history indicates that the patient is
taking some medication that is known to cause mild elevations in the
catecholamines.
Our reference ranges are based on normotensive patients (should they be as
the majority of patients under investigation are hypertensive?)
Our ranges are as follows
Noradrenaline male <640 nmol/24h; female <470 nmol/24h
Adrenaline male <100 nmol/24h; female <70 nmol/24h
Our protocol is to collect *3, 24h collections on consecutive days. (is this
the best approach)
We do not routinely perform the Pentolinium suppression test in those
patients with mildly elevated catecholamines to distinguish normal patients
as this is a potentially hazardous procedure and we would be doing rather a
lot of them. Do many of you do this procedure, if so what are your decision
making criteria?
Do any labs have 'canned' interpretative comments for catecholamines if so
what are they?.
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