Avoiding Pitfalls That Delay Diagnosis & Treatment is a series of blogs that we are posting to shed light on the most common issues patients face that delay diagnosis and surgical treatment of primary hyperparathyroid disease.

#2  The lab report your doctor is reviewing provides the correct range for your specific age, as normal ranges are dependent upon a person’s age. Your doctor casually mentions that your calcium values are just slightly elevated or at the upper limit of normal for your age but there is no need to be concerned. The doctor might even suggest that you cut back your consumption of calcium rich foods to see if that helps lower your calcium value. The doctor says they will make a note in your chart to keep an eye on it the next time you have lab work done.

Slightly elevated calcium should not be ignored. High serum blood calcium values are not caused by calcium rich foods! 

Based on reported patient experiences and our own, many doctors do not realize what mildly elevated calcium values mean and make light of it, if it is mentioned at all. In the meantime, it is often these elevated calcium values, that have been labeled as “mild” that are wreaking havoc on the patient’s health and causing some of the very symptoms the person is seeking help for.

Many of us have come to learn that we must advocate for ourselves. The first step is to become educated by always asking for a copy of our lab results. Any number above or below a range should be questioned. In the case of primary parathyroid disease, in order to advocate for ourselves we need to know what the upper limit of normal calcium is for our age. In our last blog post we discussed the primary reason why it is necessary to know the upper limit of serum calcium for our age. Knowing the upper limit for our blood calcium based on our age is so critical to making a proper diagnosis, that it merits repeating again.

Here is a link to a Hypercalcemia Calculator to discover your upper limit based on your age.

Mildly elevated calcium do as much damage to our bodies as higher values.  According to surgeons at the Norman Parathyroid Center who have gathered the largest databank of information based on treating thousands of cases per year….

Hypercalcemia complications develop over time. Thus the severity of hypercalcemia is related to how long you have calcium levels that are high, not how high it has become. A calcium of 10.5 is just as dangerous as a calcium of 11.5. Even “mild” hypercalcemia will lead to many other health problems if left untreated. It is the duration of hypercalcemia that matters, not the height of the calcium!  

If calcium values are above the upper limit for your age, then it would be wise to consider requesting a parathyroid hormone (PTH) test. Primary hyperparathyroid disease is diagnosed biochemically, through blood work. It is the relationship between serum blood calcium, PTH and Vitamin D from the same blood draw that enables a proper diagnosis.