Clinicopathological phenotype of parathyroid carcinoma: therapeutic and prognostic aftermaths

Parathyroid carcinomas (PC) are rare and "devastating"€ causes of hyperparathyroidism (HP), frequently discovered fortuitously,with not always doubtless pathological confirmation, and dissociate post-therapeutic outcomes and prognosis even after well-performed surgery. We herein report four PT neoplasms,three of them proving to be authentic PCs, and one an atypical parathyroid adenoma. There were three females and one male, aged 32-49 (mean 44) years. In three circumstances PC was associated with primary HP and in one case the tumor had developed on a CKD-BMD (renal HP) background. All patients presented marked clinical and biochemical phenomena related to hypercalcemia with greater intensity of renal, bone, neuromuscular and psychological signs and symptoms to which in one observation specific uremic manifestations were added. Preoperative and intraoperative diagnosis was suspected only in two cases (one of them being in fact an atypical PT adenoma), but in the other two it was established by paraffin section on histological evidence of definitive stigma of malignancy. Our little experience underlines the wide and protean range of the origins, clinical aspects, course and prognosis of PC, which adds to the difficulties of pre- and intraoperative diagnosis. Awareness of this lesion must be permanent to detect its presence in any unusual eventuality, imposing a radical en bloc resection at the initial operation, assuring the best chance of cure.