Parathyroid Conditions

Parathyroid gland Conditions

There are a few conditions related to the parathyroid gland which are explained below.

Low blood calcium is much less common, particularly when caused by a parathyroid gland problem. There are some conditions that are present from birth and are quickly detected and treated immediately. The treatment must be lifelong! Gradually the body adapts to this lower calcium level and symptoms can be minimal even if you are not always faithful about taking your medicine. Forget to take it for too long and bad things happen starting with tingling around the lips and in the fingers and toes. If you don’t do anything about this you will likely develop severe painful cramps in your hand. This is known as tetany – sounds like the infection tetanus but it is not at all related. A more common cause of low blood calcium due to a parathyroid problem is seen in patients who have major neck operations for conditions such as throat or thyroid cancer. In order to remove as much as the cancer as possible from the neck it is sometimes necessary to remove the parathyroid glands as well, even though they are not directly involved in the cancer. If not checked, this can cause a rapid drop in calcium and the development of tingling and cramps in the hands and feet. This does not happen often because the surgeon will be carefully monitoring your blood calcium if he or she has done extensive neck surgery. Making sure you get plenty of calcium by mouth and intravenously is always done and many times there is also treatment with the active vitamin D, calcitriol. Patients who are left with under-active parathyroids after such surgery do not really adapt well to this and are at much increased risk of having symptoms from their low calcium. The medicines cannot be skipped! hide

Primary Hyperparathyroidism

Primary hyperparathyroidism means that an individual has overactive parathyroid disease. This condition cannot be prevented. hide

Secondary Hyperparathyroidism

Secondary Hyperparathyroidism cannot be prevented unless one was able to prevent the cause of the secondary hyperparathyroidism – something that is not usually possible.
Chronic kidney disease is usually silent and the secondary hyperparathyroid develops during this silent phase. Renal leak hypercalciura (too much calcium being excreted in the urine) is silent unless the patient has a kidney stone resulting from the hypercacliuria so this cause of secondary hyperparathyroid is also not preventable. Chronic vitamin D deficiency will lead to secondary hyperparathyroidism and this is obviously preventable if vitamin D nutrition is always adequate. In people with normal gastro-intestinal function, nutritional D deficiency is always preventable. In patients with bowel disease (e.g. Crohn’s disease, sprue) when the GI symptoms are present, the secondary hyperparathyroidism may well be present. In brief, hyperparathyroidism is essentially not a preventable condition. However, both primary and secondary hyperparathyroidism are very treatable and the “cure” is the anticipated result in most patients with the exception of late stage chronic kidney disease. hide

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