Recent progress in management of secondary hyperparathyroidism of chronic renal failure

Recent progress in cellular and molecular biology has had a great impact on our understanding of parathyroid hormone-vitamin D physiology and of the pathogenesis of secondary hyperparathyroidism in chronic renal failure and made possible the development of new therapeutic approaches for management of bone disease in dialysis patients. Management of parathyroid hyperplasia by calcitriol pulse therapy is one example. Suppression of parathyroid hyperfunction by other vitamin D analogues was also proposed, and some of these analogues are now under clinical trial. Further, percutaneous ethanol injection into hyperplastic parathyroid glands under ultrasonographic guidance has become the choice practical procedure under certain clinical settings and can be an effective alternate to surgical parathyroidectomy. In this article, we review selected and pertinent progress in the pathogenesis and management of secondary hyperparathyroidism and parathyroid hyperplasia, major causes of morbidity in chronic dialysis patients, emphasizing the important contributions made by laboratory research and critical clinical observations.