The surgical aspect of renal hyperparathyroidism: a summary of the guidelines

Abstract

Renal hyperparathyroidism is a common disease affecting the vast majority of chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. With effective medical treatment, only 5-10% of CKD patients require surgical treatment. The medical treatment includes a wide variety of medications to replace the inactive vitamin D, suppress the hyperactive parathyroid glands and also to counteract the hyperphosphatemia. Based on publications from Egypt, the financial difficulties the CKD patients are suffering from does not allow the delivery of successful medical treatment. This is mainly due to the inability to use an effective and more expensive phosphate binder and active vitamin D (1). Also, calcimimetic therapy (e.g cinacalcet) is unaffordable and needs life-long administration. This has led to an increased prevalence of the florid disease compared to developed countries (2). The situation was made worse by the lack of understanding of the principles of diagnosis and surgical treatment of renal hyperparathyroidism among many clinicians. Surgeons rely mainly on imaging in the localization of the hyperplastic glands, which is well known to be not sensitive enough in this multi-gland disease (3). This often led to inadequate surgical management of this disease. Also, the multicentric nature of this condition (multi-gland, rather than a single-gland disease) is often undermined. The published reports from Egypt showed only a few centres dealing with this disease; however the number of patients reported is quite small with variable outcomes (4). The reported outcome demonstrates that more patients require surgery for the poorly controlled hyperparathyroidism that unmasks the lack of appropriate surgical experience in many district areas of Egypt.