Test to Confirm Success of Parathyroid Surgery

An automated metabolic assay panel for intact parathyroid hormone enables laboratories to confirm the completeness of parathyroid surgery, which can be difficult for surgeons because of the small size of the parathyroid glands.

Following surgery, surgeons cannot be certain that a suspect adenoma on a parathyroid gland has been completely removed. The new assay enables accurate iPTH measurements to be obtained rapidly from postoperative plasma samples in the laboratory. The assay is run on the Advia CentaurT and Bayer ACS:180T immunoassay systems of Bayer Diagnostics (Tarrytown, NY, USA), which offer rapid result generation.

In addition to postsurgical testing, the iPTH assay can also help clinicians distinguish between patients suffering from hyperparathyroidism, hypoparathyroidism, or hypercalcemia of malignancy, when used in conjunction with the measurement of ionized calcium. The iPTH levels are also used to assess and manage other metabolic bone disorders, including osteoporosis and renal osteodystrophy.

"There is currently a lot of interest in the possibility of measuring iPTH intraoperatively in the theater, but the near-patient testing equipment that's needed to do this is extremely expensive,” remarked Peter Wood, director of the department of chemical pathology at Southampton General Hospital (UK). "Now that it's possible to obtain iPTH results from automated analyzers in the laboratory, this is proving to be a much more cost-effective option.”




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