Anton Staudenherz

Prim. Prof. Univ. Doz. Dr. Anton Staudenherz is a specialist in internal medicine and nuclear medicine at JUVENIS Medical Center in central Vienna, where his focus is the thyroid gland. He heads the Clinical Institute for Nuclear Medicine, Molecular Imaging and Special Endocrinology at St. Pölten University Hospital, and holds a habilitation in nuclear medicine from the University of Vienna.

Education and training Dr. Staudenherz studied medicine at the University of Vienna from 1987 to 1993 and received his doctorate in 1993. He completed specialist training in internal medicine between 1993 and 1999, qualifying as a specialist in 1999, and then trained in nuclear medicine from 1999 to 2002, qualifying in 2002. In the same year he completed his habilitation, earning the venia docendi in nuclear medicine — the qualification to teach the subject at university level.

Career From 2002 to 2018 he was a divisional senior physician for radiology and nuclear medicine at Vienna General Hospital (AKH Wien), Austria's largest hospital. Since 1 August 2018 he has headed the Clinical Institute for Nuclear Medicine, Molecular Imaging and Special Endocrinology at St. Pölten University Hospital.

Clinical focus at JUVENIS

• Internal medicine
• The thyroid gland
• Underactive and overactive thyroid (hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism)
• Follow-up examinations after thyroid cancer
• Thyroid dysfunction in patients trying to conceive
• Ruling out thyroid dysfunction as a cause of weight problems

Why the thyroid is worth a specialist The thyroid produces the hormones that set the pace of the entire body. When it runs slow, the result is fatigue, weight gain, feeling cold, low mood and slowed thinking. When it runs fast, it is weight loss, a racing heart, sweating, tremor and anxiety. Both are easy to mistake for something else — stress, depression, ageing, or simply a bad year.

Two situations in particular are worth naming. Weight that will not shift despite real effort is sometimes thyroid, and far more often is not — which is exactly why it is worth ruling out properly rather than guessing. And thyroid function matters a great deal to fertility: an underactive thyroid can make conception harder and raise risks in early pregnancy, and it is straightforward to detect and correct. Dr. Staudenherz's role in both is the same: establish clearly whether the thyroid is part of the picture, and treat it if it is.

A note on nuclear medicine Nuclear medicine is the field that images and treats the thyroid using small amounts of radioactive tracer — the discipline behind thyroid scintigraphy and radioiodine therapy, and the one that produced most of what is known about how the gland behaves. Dr. Staudenherz is board-certified and habilitated in it and heads a university institute of it. These procedures are performed in hospital, not at JUVENIS — what his background brings to the consulting room here is the depth of interpretation behind a thyroid assessment.

Languages Prof. Staudenherz treats patients in German and English.

His approach Asked what attractiveness means to him, he describes lateral thinking — taking unconventional and innovative routes to a solution — and carrying the people around him along through genuine engagement, at work and privately. He adds a second thought: getting through the day with humour and a degree of Socratic irony, while not forgetting to stop at least once daily and examine his own thinking and actions critically.