Selected thyreology problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism – did anything change?

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) observed the scale of epidemic risk and declared the state of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most countries, including Poland, implemented national and local emergency management plans to deal with the imminent threat of SARS-CoV-2 infection, one of the most serious in this century, according to many experts. In the era of pandemic, during which an epidemiological regime and social distancing are constantly recommended, and routine medical care and planned surgical procedures have been postponed or significantly reduced, patients and their physicians have to struggle on a daily basis with difficult access to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. This is a great challenge for both groups. The aim of this study is to assess the current state of knowledge about thyreological diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide indications for the introduced therapeutic changes on the basis of recent scientific literature published up to December 2020 and searches of the PubMed, Google Scholar, EMBASE, and Web of Science databases, which searched for keywords related to SARS-CoV-2 and its influence on thyreology problems. The main focus was on diagnostic and therapeutic differences in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, bearing in mind the most common endocrinopathies, i.e. hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism, as well as advantages and disadvantages and possibilities of using telemedicine in the common practice of a specialist physician.