Most people have never heard of the parathyroid glands—or what they do.
Yet these four tiny glands in the neck—each roughly the size of a grain of rice—help regulate calcium levels in the body, which are essential for healthy bones, muscles, nerves, and kidneys. When they don’t work properly, they can cause a range of symptoms that are often mistaken for normal aging or other health conditions.
Even some patients seeing surgeons who specialize in parathyroid disorders aren’t quite sure what they are or what they do.
That’s part of the problem.
“These are not things that people come in knowing about,” says Jennifer Ogilvie, MD, chief of endocrine surgery at Yale Medicine and associate professor of surgery at Yale School of Medicine. “We end up doing a lot of basic education before we can even talk about the condition.”
Even when symptoms appear, they’re easy to dismiss.
“Many of the symptoms are vague,” adds Courtney Gibson, MD, MS, an endocrine surgeon at Yale Medicine. “Fatigue, for example—you can have that for so many reasons. People often just think, ‘this is life, I’m getting older.’”
Despite their small size, parathyroid disorders are relatively common and can cause symptoms that linger, often unexplained, for years. Fortunately, once the underlying problem is identified, treatment can often relieve symptoms and prevent long-term complications.
