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Pathology

I had parathyroid surgery last week - two glands were removed. The biopsy came back as hyperplasia instead of adenoma. My understanding is that if it is hyperplasia, all FOUR glands are affected. My surgeon did find a 3rd gland "lumped in" next to one of the enlarged glands and he originally took it as well, upon further inspection, realized it was not part of the bad gland and appeared normal, so he re-implanted it. He did NOT look at the 4th gland at all. My question is, since the pathology came back as hyperplasia instead of adenoma, will I need another surgery at some point to remove the other gland?

Thank you for bringing up this really important topic! The full answer to your question is complicated, so here is the brief summary: Pathology is not used to determine whether you had adenomas or hyperplasia. In most cases, we can't determine hyperplasia vs. adenoma on pathology slides. The report is really just confirming that your surgeon removed parathyroids. An adenoma may be called "hy...

Operation Pathology

I had a parathyroid adenoma removed when I was 37 years old. I am now 73 years old and have been diagnosed with a second parathyroid adenoma (calcium is 10.8 mg/dl and PTH 78 pg/ml) which will require surgery. How common is this and are most doctors aware it can reoccur?

Thanks for asking! There are a couple of aspects to your question. First, how common is it to have recurrent parathyroid disease? It's hard to get firm numbers on exactly how many people end up having more than one parathyroid operation, because patients often follow up with different providers, and a recurrence can take many years to present (like in your situation). So I can't give an exa...

Multigland disease Primary HPT Operation Outcomes Pathology primary hyperparathyroidism