[Primary hyperparathyroidism: three decades of evolution in diagnostic and imaging techniques and advantages of early...

Recent progresses in the ability to obtain a secure diagnosis and preoperative localisation have resulted in a lower threshold for surgery of primary hyperparathyroidism. We questioned whether these trends have been accompanied by an improvement in surgical results, or changes in the profile of the disease among operated patients. From a total of 511 operations (499 patients), we retrospectively investigated the data from three successive periods of 10 years each: (1973-1982: 73 operations; (1983-1992): 155 operations; (1993-2002): 283 operations. Rates of surgical failure, defined as persistent hypercalcaemia at six months, have progressively declined: 6.8%, 1.3% and 0.7% respectively. There also has been a decline in the rates of permanent hypoparathyroidism or laryngeal nerve injury. However, these complications were highly influenced by the underlying pathology (surgery for single adenoma versus surgery for multiple gland disease) and by the need for concomitant thyroid surgery. Considering signs and symptoms, the frequency of kidney stones has declined from 50% to 29.7%, while the rate of patients diagnosed at routine screening has increased from 19% to 39%. The prevalence of parathyroid cancer among operated patients has successively declined from 6.8% to 1.3%, then 0% during the last period. Our data suggest that present improvement in the success rate of parathyroid surgery be partly due to improvement in preoperative localisation. Among imaging techniques, subtraction scintigraphy, based on the simultaneous recording of technetium-99m-sestamibi and iodine-123, provided the highest rate of accurate location (92.6%). Because this imaging technique depicted a majority of cases of multiple parathyroid gland disease at prospective evaluation (14 out of 15), we now use it to select appropriate cases for a focussed surgery under local anaesthesia, without the additional need for intraoperative PTH monitoring. The present good surgical results would justify surgery even for elderly or asymptomatic patients. Surgery carried out before appearance of symptoms seems beneficial. Only asymptomatic patients with a short life expectancy may be denied surgery.