Acta clinica Croatica, Vol. 64. No. 2, 2025.
Book review
https://doi.org/10.20471/acc.2025.64.02.25
Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma Developed Years after the Patient Had Undergone Partial Thyroidectomy due to Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma
Banu Karapolat
orcid.org/0000-0001-5132-8266
; Department of General Surgery, Kanuni Training and Research Hospital, Trabzon, Turkey
*
Yusuf Ziya Yamak
; Department of General Surgery, Kanuni Training and Research Hospital, Trabzon, Turkey
Ayten Livaoğlu
; Department of Pathology, Kanuni Training and Research Hospital, Trabzon, Turkey
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Thyroid cancers are frequently seen tumors and surgery is the gold standard in
treatment. An 80-year-old female patient presented to our department with right side neck swelling
and shortness of breath. Her history revealed that she had undergone a near-total thyroidectomy
10 years before due to papillary thyroid carcinoma and she had a growing swelling in her neck
in the last 2 years. A hard mass involving the whole right side of her neck was found on physical
examination. Tomography showed a mass on the right side of the neck approximately 10x12 cm in
size with heterogeneous density, which was pushing the trachea to the left. Fine needle aspiration
biopsy findings suggested undifferentiated malignant tumor, i.e., anaplastic thyroid carcinoma were
obtained while her distant organ scans were normal. The patient was operated under general anesthesia;
she underwent completion total thyroidectomy and radical neck dissection. As a result of
the histopathologic examination, she was diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid carcinoma. The patient
received radioactive I-131 therapy and no problems were found at her 3-month follow up examination.
In conclusion, when surgical near-total thyroidectomy is performed in patients with papillary
thyroid carcinoma, a new malignancy may develop in the residual thyroid tissue even after many
years. In such cases, completion total thyroidectomy and adjuvant multimodal treatment methods
should be preferred.
Keywords
Thyroid cancers; Surgery; Tumor relapse; Local
Hrčak ID:
337966
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2025.
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