Follow-up after treatment for parathyroid cancer
Follow-up care lets your healthcare team keep track of your health for a period of time after treatment ends. This important part of cancer care is often shared among the cancer specialists and your family doctor. They will help you recover from treatment side effects and monitor you for any signs that the cancer has come back (recurred).
Follow-up care may not seem that important to you, especially if your treatment was long or very hard. You may find the idea of follow-up care stressful because it reminds you of your cancer experience or because you are worried about what a test might reveal. Talk to your healthcare team about how you feel and about why follow-up matters. Your healthcare team is there to help.
Schedule for follow-up visits
Don’t wait until your next scheduled appointment to report any new symptoms or symptoms that don't go away. Tell your healthcare team if you have symptoms of hypercalcemia.
For about half of the people with parathyroid cancer, the cancer will come back (recur) after surgery. It usually happens 2 to 5 years after the initial surgery.
Your doctor will need to monitor you for signs of a recurrence for the rest of your life. Follow-up visits are usually every 3 months and include testing calcium and parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels in the blood.
During follow-up visits
During a follow-up visit, your healthcare team will usually ask questions about the side effects of treatment and how you’re coping. They may also ask about symptoms you may have.
Your doctor may do a physical exam, including:
- checking your pulse and blood pressure
- feeling your neck for lumps or enlarged lymph nodes
Tests are often part of follow-up care. You may have:
- blood tests to check for high levels of calcium and PTH
- an ultrasound of the neck to check if the cancer has come back (local recurrence) or spread to lymph nodes
- a parathyroid scan (also called a sestamibi scan) to check if the cancer has come back
- a CT scan or an MRI of the neck, chest or abdomen to look for metastatic cancer
If the cancer has come back, you and your healthcare team will discuss your treatment and care.
Find out more about follow-up
The following are questions that you can ask the healthcare team about follow-up after treatment for cancer. Choose the questions that fit your situation and add questions of your own. You may find it helpful to take the list to the next appointment and to write down the answers.
- What is the schedule for follow-up visits?
- How often is follow-up scheduled with the cancer specialist?
- Who is responsible for follow-up visits?
- What will happen at a follow-up visit?
- What tests are done on a regular basis? How often are they done?
- Are there any symptoms that should be reported right away? Who do I call?
- Who can help me cope with long-term side effects of treatment?
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