PRACTICA OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGICA
Vol. 95 No. 8 August 2002
Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma with a High Serum
GM-CSF Level
Makoto Kurose
(Hakodate Municipal Hospital)
Jun Satoh, Hiroshi Tsubota, Tadayuki Ishikawa,
Masanori Konishi and Tetsuo Himi
(Sapporo Medical University)
We report here a case of anaplastic thyroid carcinoma with a high serum GM-CSF level. A 75-year-old man was admitted because of a rapidly enlarging neck mass. Investigation demonstrated that the neck mass consisted of anaplastic carcinoma of the throid gland. Although radiation therapy was performed, he died 3 months after admission due to respiratory insufficiency caused by metastatic lung carcinoma. Marked elevation of the number of leukocytes to 95,700/mm3 was observed during the clinical course, and an increase in the GM-CSF level (46.90 pg/dl) was demonstrated in the serum. We discuss the clinical course and prognosis of this tumor based on our case with reference to the literature.
Key words : anaplastic thyroid carcinoma, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)