Hide empty category

i’m using a shortcode to display menus. If i have 4 categories configured to display (e.g. categ=”3,17,6,4,5″ ) , it shows all four headings, even if some of the categories don’t contain any ‘menu items’. Is there any way to automatically hide the headings for any ’empty categories’ without having to manually adjust the shortcode each time?
thanks ??