Table 3.

Pre- and post-operative calcium, phosphor, parathyroid hormone levels between patients with and without symptomatic hypocalcemia in the dexamethasone group

		Pre-operative	Post-operative	P-value *	P-value **
Patients with symptomatic hypocalcemia n=9	Calcium (mg/dL)	Mean ±SD	Mean ±SD	0.001	0.05
		9.2±0.78	8.2±0.78
		Median [min-max]	Median [min-max]
		9 [8.2-10.9]	8.5 [6.8-9.5]
Patients Without symptomatic hypocalcemia n=29		Mean ±SD	Mean ±SD	0.01
		9.3±0.42	8.8±0.72
		Median [min-max]	Median [min-max]
		9.4 [8.1-10]	8.7 [7.5-10.2]
P-value***		0.72	0.02
Patients with symptomatic hypocalcemia n=8	Phosphor (mg/dL)	Mean ±SD	Mean ±SD	0.7	0.73
		3.8±0.59	4.02±0.91
		Median [min-max]	Median [min-max]
		3.8 [2.8-4.8]	3.9 [2.7-5.8]
Patients Without symptomatic hypocalcemia n=29		Mean ±SD	Mean ±SD	0.096
		3.3±0.66	3.8±0.75
		Median [min-max]	Median [min-max]
		3.5 [2.3-4.6]	4 [2.5-5]
P-value		0.09	0.53
Patients with symptomatic hypocalcemia n=16	PTH	Mean ±SD	Mean ±SD	<0.0001	0.186
		49.66±18.18	14.58±9.88
		Median [min-max]	Median [min-max]
		58.2 [11.7-71]	12.77 [2.1-31.35]
Patients Without symptomatic hypocalcemia n=29		Mean ±SD	Mean ±SD	<0.0001
		50.73±16.72	20.53±16.21
		Median [min-max]	Median [min-max]
		58.2 [14-82]	17.6 [3-80]
P-value		0.84	0.189

^*Resulted from paired t-test

^** Resulted from analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) adjusting for baseline values

^*** Resulted from independent T-test