Therapy in Tracheal Obstruction by an Invading Well-Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma

Copyright © 2013 Nickolaos Pontikides et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs) usually extend to lymph nodes in the neck and mediastinum. Rarely, they invade the neighboring upper airway anatomical structures. We report a 56-year-old woman who presented with symptoms of upper airway obstruction. Imaging studies revealed a lesion derived from the thyroid which invaded and obstructed the trachea, which appeared to be a highly differentiated PTC. Total thyroidectomywas performed, with removal of the endotracheal part of themass along with the corresponding anterior tracheal rings. Two months later, a whole body I131 scan after recombinant human thyroid-stimulating hormone (rh-TSH) administration was performed and revealed a residual mass in upper left thyroid lobe. Subsequently, 150mC