IMPORTANT CONCEPTS TO GRASP FROM THIS PAGE OF PARATHYROID.COM

As you read this page, you need to grasp several concepts: 1) Normal parathyroid glands are very small. 2) the vast majority of patients with parathyroid disease will have one bad parathyroid gland and three small normal glands. 3) the one bad parathyroid gland is actually a tumor which we call a parathyroid adenoma. 4) most parathyroid adenomas are about the size of an olive or grape and are dark red and firm. Many parathyroid tumors are golf ball size or larger. 5) IMPORTANT, you do NOT need to have high PTH levels to have hyperparathyroidism (clearly one of the most important points of this entire page, as high calcium levels almost always mean a parathyroid tumor is present regardless of what the PTH level is, 6) you do NOT need to have calcium levels above 12 to have a very serious tumor in your neck. Look at the size of the tumors in people who have calcium levels above 12... these tumors take serious tolls on people's lives as they sit in the neck and grow for years. Don't do that!  7) A "negative Sestamibi Scan" does NOT mean that you don't have a parathyroid tumor. It just means that the scan was not done correctly (95% of the time), or that the tumor is small and hiding behind the thyroid (5% of the time).  If you have parathyroid disease then you have a tumor in your neck... regardless of whether your scan is negative or not. All of these tumors with the graphic on them had a "negative" sestamibi scan at their home town x-ray department... but when we did the scan correctly, the scan was positive and we can see the tumor. Most scans are done poorly and are negative because they are poor quality scans! 8) Most surgeons require you to have a positive sestamibi scan if you want a mini-parathyroid operation... but there are some experts who can do mini-parathyroid surgery on EVERY patient, even those who have negative scans (we do mini surgery on 100% of patients and wish nobody had a scan ahead of time... it just confuses things! Yes... we do mini surgery even if the scan is negative).

MISTAKES BEING MADE IN THE DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF HYPERPARATHYROIDISM

This page also serves to show the two most common misconceptions and misunderstandings that many doctors have about hyperparathyroidism. Most doctors who don't see patients with hyperparathyroidism very often will believe that to make the diagnosis of hyperparathyroidism it is required to have high calcium levels AND high PTH levels at the same time. Although having high calcium and PTH levels at the same time occurs in most patients with a parathyroid tumor and hyperparathyroidism, this (simplistic) situation does not occur in about 20% of patients (594 out of our last 3000 patients did NOT have high calcium and high PTH at the same time... some of them are on this page). In our opinion, the second biggest mistake made by MANY doctors is that they believe that patients should wait and not go for surgery until their calcium is some arbitrary high number (often they pick the number 12 as the number where the patient should finally get an operation).  Geeeezzzzz!!!! PLEASE look at this page and look at the size of the tumors in these patients' necks who have calcium levels above 12!! Heck, look at the size of the tumors that people have who have calcium levels of 10.5!  What are we waiting for???  High calcium is almost always due to a parathyroid tumor... regardless of how high the calcium is. High calcium means parathyroid tumor except in the rarest of circumstances. Get rid of it! If you are told to wait for surgery until your calcium is some number that is picked out of thin air (or obtained from some out-dated "guideline"), then please print this page and discuss it with your doctor. We believe this is a very serious mistake!

arathyroid pictures, pictures of parathyroid glands, parathyroid photographs, parathyroid gland pictures, hyperparathyroid photos, hyperparathyroidism pictures, hyperparathyroidism photos, illustrations, parathyroid illustrations. last updated 02/24/2008

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Parathyroid.com is an educational service of the Norman Parathyroid Clinic, the world's only parathyroid-exclusive clinic, 
consulting on over 3500 parathyroid patients and performing approximately 1800 mini-parathyroid operations annually.
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