“incidental papillary thyroid cancer in thyroglossal duct cyst”: a case report

Introduction: papillary thyroid cancer (ptc) in thyroglossal duct cyst (tgdc) is an infrequent condition with less than two hundred cases described in literature, with an incidence likely to be close to 1%. while its management is quite straightforward, there exists significant controversy regarding whether additional treatment is needed to manage incidentally noticed carcinoma in tgdcs. case report: a 37-years-old man came to us complaining of a slowly progressive neck mass located in the midline from 4 years ago. ultrasonography (us) showed a mixed tumor with cyst predominance of 90x79x50 mm and computed-tomography (ct) revealed a mixed inframentonian heterogeneous tumor associated with small, mostly peripheral calcifications. the mass was resected using sistrunk’s surgery. histologic review reported a moderately differentiated papillary carcinoma in thyroglossal duct cyst, without vascular and lymphatic invasion. after two months, a total thyroidectomy was done, to which the pathological report informed normal thyroid. conclusion: thyroglossal duct cyst carcinoma is a rare entity. management should be decided on single risk stratification. in all cases, a sistrunk surgery would be accomplished in order  to remove the tumor. the reason for thyroidectomy in individuals with a normal thyroid is due to the probability of presenting an intraglandular thyroid cancer concomitantly. it also enables the management with radio-iodine and patient follow up by quantifying thyroglobulin levels.