Vol.102 No.6 contentsPRACTICA OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGICA
Vol. 102 No. 6 June 2009
A Case of Metastatic Breast Carcinoma of the Thyroid Gland
Yuzuru Sainoo and Haruo Takahashi
(Nagasaki University School of Biomedical Sciences)
Yasuo Osato
(Sasebo Central Hospital)
(Metastatic carcinoma of the thyroid gland is uncommon. A 49-year-old woman visited our hospital for hoarseness.
Endoscopic examination showed left-sided laryngeal nerve palsy. Physical examination revealed a firm thyroid and several palpable firm lymph nodes on the left side of the neck. Diffuse enlargement of the thyroid with fine calcification was revealed on echo imaging, and computed tomography showed a tumor-like mass of the left breast and enlargement of the left-sided axillary lymph nodes.
A specimen obtained by fine needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy from the thyroid gland was misdiagnosed as papillary carcinoma of the thyroid gland. However, the pathological characteristics of specimens obtained by FNA from the axillary lymph node and the breast closely resembled those from the thyroid gland. Therefore, we performed incision biopsy of both the thyroid gland and breast for a definite diagnosis.
Immunohistochemistry revealed positive results for estrogen and progesterone receptors, and negative results for thyroglobulin, HER-2, and p-53 in specimens from the two sites leading to a diagnosis of ductal carcinoma of the breast and metastasis to the thyroid gland.
Key words :breast carcinoma, metastatic thyroid tumor, fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNA),
immunohistochemistry