Mediastinal Parathyroid Cysts

Diagnosis and Therapeutic Management of Parathyroid Cysts

“…Rarely there are clinical signs corresponding to a complication: cervical pain [1,3,11,19] and/or thoracic pain [18] or compression symptoms [3,8,11,16,[18][19][20], dyspahgia (one of our observations), dysphonia [5,20] dyspnoea, dry cough or stridor [15,21] deviation and vascular compression [11,18,22]. Systemically the patient will be normal unless the cyst causes significant hyperparathyroidism which itself can be symptomless.…”

“…They contain a clear mucous fluid [1,11,13]. Parathyroid tissue is found on histological examination forming islands surrounded by fibrous tissue, this confirms the parathyroid nature of the cyst [1,11,14,20,21].…”

“…Only 1% -5% of cases of hyperparathyroidism are caused by parathyroid cysts (in our experience there were five FPCs every 538 cervicotomies for parathyroid pathology, 0.9%) FPCs, most frequently encountered in male patients, are typically degenerative or are bleeds from an adenoma [14,16,21]. Their content is brownish or bloody [1].…”

“…Only blood biochemistry can tell the difference between FPCs or NPCs. For some, the concentration of carboxyterminel fragments of PTH in the aspirate fluid is more interesting and a better measure than the whole hormone [2,11,21,26]. The aspirate fluid of parathyroid cyst is acellular and does not contain thyroid hormones.…”

Vocal cord paralysis secondary to a benign parathyroid cyst: a case report with clinical, imaging and pathological findings (2008:6b)

“…From embryological developments, the parathyroid glands and therefore parathyroid cysts can be found related to the thyroid gland (upper parathyroid glands) and the thymus (lower parathyroid glands). A parathyroid cyst may be found in the neck or the mediastinum and may mimic a thyroid or mediastinal lesion [7]. Most are presumed to be asymptomatic and are occasionally described as incidental findings in postmortem studies [8].…”