Histopathological diagnosis of parathyroid diseases

Hyperparathyroidism is the predominant disease of the parathyroid gland. This disease is nowadays quite common and is often diagnosed at an earlier stage, mainly by means of serum calcium determinations on wide indications. This means that when detected, the glandular abnormalities may be less advanced, which could hamper differentiation of adenoma from chief cell hyperplasia, and of normal glands from slightly hyperplastic ones. Normal glands and pathological glands both show wide variations in size, cellular composition and arrangement, as described in this article. The usefulness of applying fat staining to distinguish between normal and abnormal glands is also reported. It is important to bear in mind that the parathyroid diagnosis is in fact an indirect diagnosis based on the assessment of an associated gland or glands.