Giant parathyroid adenoma associated with severe hypercalcemia in an adolescent patient

The objective of this study is to bring attention to the importance of differential diagnosis in adolescent patients with skeletal involvement and hypercalcemia.

A 17-year-old male patient with a complaint of severe leg pain was admitted to our hospital. Seven months before he had a fracture of his distal humerus after falling on to his left shoulder and was treated conservatively. Five months previously, he had a rupture of his quadriceps tendon. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed for the quadriceps tendon rupture and was evaluated as polyostotic fibrous dysplasia (PFD). Doctors decided to operate for the ruptured tendon but they detected severe hypercalcemia in the pre-operative blood tests and noticed that the main disease was primary hyper-parathyroidisim (PHPT) which was caused by a giant parathyroid adenoma. Conclusions Giant parathyroid adenoma can present in adolescent patients with multiple bone lesions and severe hypercalcemia. PHPT should be considered in the differential diagnosis of pathological bone fractures and benign bone tumors in every age. This may prevent patients from miss or delayed diagnosis of PHPT.