← Return to Elevated parathyroid hormone (PTH): How is it treated?

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@sennertd

High PTH is caused by your parathyroid gland releasing too much PTH. PTH and calcium work together to keep each other in balance. If the PTH is high, the calcium should be very low. Or vice versa. If both are high or even at the high normal, you need to get it checked out. You should get the both the PTH and calcium tested in the same blood draw. Sometimes if the Vit D is low, it will cause the calcium to be high. My calcium ranged from 9.9 - 11.2 over 5 years before I was diagnosed with Hyperparathyroidism. They didn't check my PTH until my calcium was finally flagged as high. The only "cure" for this is to have the parathyroid gland removed that has the adenoma (tumor) on it. You need a surgeon who performs at least 50 of these a year as it is highly specialized. There are many symptoms of Hyperparathyroidism but most can be blamed on something else. I had about half of them. I went to Mayo in Rochester for final diagnosis, surgery consult and surgery. I was VERY happy with the drs and treatment. They ran all the necessary tests within 24 hours that confirmed the diagnosis. They range from blood tests, 24 hour urine, bone density scan and a nuclear scan. It was an outpatient surgery. I was in the hospital for 6 hours total. They removed one adenoma. They use interoperative PTH testing and that is how they know that the correct parathyroid gland was removed. A person has 4 glands and they can all be affected. They have to leave 1/2 of one. In my case, my PTH dropped from 77 to 15 so they knew the one gland that showed up on the nuclear scan was the only one. I started to feel better immediately, my symptoms all went away within a week. I was lucky because I had very limited bone density loss and when I get it rechecked, they feel it will be normal again. I also did not have any kidney stones which are very common with this disease. Good luck.

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Replies to "High PTH is caused by your parathyroid gland releasing too much PTH. PTH and calcium work..."

Thank you.

Hello @sennertd

I see that this is your first post on Mayo Connect and I would like to welcome you. I so appreciate all of the first-hand information you provided about your experience with hyperparathyroidism. It sounds like your surgery went well and that you are feeling much better now.

How did they know to remove just "one adenoma." Was that from the nuclear scan?

Very informative and helpful. Thanks.

I am getting frustrated with my doctor, have had slighly high calcium levels for years off and on, finally checked pth and it is high and has been for awhile, looked at one other time it was checked back in 2005, yep 2005 and it was high then but ignored. Doctor now checked bone density in knees and says it good but D3 is low so now i will be taking 50000 units once a week and 2000 units once a day for 3 months. My calcium is 10 right now, down from 11.3 so he says that is normal so no problem. Yep I feel awful and have been having erratic high blood pressure that doesn't respond to meds for very long....oh when he did a scan in his office like ones they do on pg ladies it showed thyroid or parathyroid nodules....