Nope, Except for Virus Testing

For the few months following the COVID-19 pandemic we require all patients to have a negative virus test within 72 hours of the operation. This is the same for both of our hospitals. Generally, the hospital will handle this issue with you directly.

General Medical Clearance

For patients having their operation at the Norman Parathyroid Center, the answer is “no”. No you do not need medical clearance from your doctor or your cardiologist before you have surgery with us. We have done this operation so many times that we do not require medical clearance before we operate on you. It usually takes about 20 minutes to do the operation and the blood loss is typically less than a thimble-full (virtually bloodless in most cases). This is extremely well tolerated and not a big stress to your body or your heart.

We do not get EKG’s on our patients pre-operatively, or require you to get blood testing done before your operation. We have lots of blood work on you already (that’s how we know you have a parathyroid problem!). Many of our patients have MANY other medical problems, but remember, many of those other medical problems are either caused by or made worse by the parathyroid problem. More than 11% of our patients are on Coumadin, and 7% have a pacemaker. We operate on “sick” people every day and they do just fine.

Of course every patient is a unique individual, but we operate on people over the age of 80 virtually every day, and people in their 90’s about once a week. These kind of problems are not an issue if you have a quick, simple, small operation.

Typically, the better question is this… not if you are healthy enough to have parathyroid surgery, but how soon will the parathyroid surgery make many of your health problems better!

Bottom line

We have never cancelled a case because a patient was not “healthy enough” to have surgery. On two occasions, we delayed an operation for a few days, but that is 2 out of 34,000 operations. Parathyroid disease makes people sick, and it affects many other organ systems. Almost all patients are healthier within days of surgery than they were before the operation.