Parathyroid Carcinoma

Abstract

Introduction Parathyroid carcinoma is a rare lesion, but it is difficult to be certain of its true incidence because the criteria of diagnosis have varied with different authors.^40,41 Some parathyroid tumors have exhibited mitoses, capsular invasion, blood vessel invasion, and atypical cells. As the overwhelming majority of these have not recurred, the evaluation of malignancy by histological criteria is difficult. On the other hand, benign-appearing tumors have been associated with metastases.³⁰ Therefore, for the purpose of this paper, parathyroid carcinoma has been taken to mean a parathyroid tumor which metastasizes or is locally invasive, and causes hyperparathyroidism. It should be functioning because it may otherwise not be possible to differentiate between tumors of the thyroid, parathyroid, and thymus which are histologically similar.^40,41,44 Included in the review are locally recurrent tumors and tumors which were disseminated by capsular rupture at surgery and then became invasive.^40,41 Review There