[Parathyroid carcinoma in a patient on hemodialysis for renal failure]

Parathyroid carcinoma is a rare endocrine neoplasm with difficult histological diagnostic and unpredictable evolution. More unusual are the cases appearing in the course of end-stage renal disease on maintenance dialysis (22 observations in medical literature). A 46-year-old man suffering of chronic glomerulonephritis and renal failure for 13 years, having been on hemodialysis for three years, complains of asthenia, adynamia, muscle weakness, progressive osteoarticular pains, itching. The preoperative iPTH was 71/ng/ml, seric Ca2+/1.23 mmol/l, seric Ca/2.6/mmoli/l, seric P/2.02 mmol/l. Clinical and ultrasonographical examinations revealed a left "thyroid nodule" of 44 x 37 mm but no images of the parathyroid. Upon surgery, three parathyroid glands (two from the right side and the superior left one) were identified and excised after the frozen section. The fourth gland was not found but the resected "nodule" together with the adjacent thyroid lobe proved a parathyroid carcinoma upon paraffin examination. The clinical course after operation was uneventful. The authors underlined the criteria and difficulties in the pathologic diagnosis of parathyroid carcinoma and also the principles of surgical treatment based on their experience of three cases.