Case Reports in Endocrinology
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 862545, 5 pages
doi:10.1155/2012/862545
A Poor Prognostic Case of Mucoepidermoid Carcinoma of the Thyroid: A Case Report
1Department of Surgery and Oncology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku,
Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan
2Department of Anatomic Pathology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan
3Department of Surgery, Hamanomachi Hospital, 3-5-27 Maizuru, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka 810-8539, Japan
4Department of Surgery, Ito Clinic, 265-1 Hatae, Itoshimashi, Fukuoka 819-1104, Japan
Received 7 June 2012; Accepted 17 July 2012
Academic Editors: C. Capella, T. Grüning, and R. Swaminathan
Copyright © 2012 Koji Shindo 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.
Abstract
Mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC) of the thyroid is very rare and low-grade indolent neoplasm. In past reports of the thyroid MEC, only seven cases were described as poor prognosis. A 91-year-old woman presented with a rapidly growing mass of the left upper neck. She was followed thyroid papillary carcinoma (PC) without operation for two years. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) showed undifferentiated cells. Total thyroidectomy and bilateral neck dissection were performed. In pathological findings, the tumor had two areas of MEC and PC. The boundary of them was mixed. She died of multiple lung metastases only after four months from the operation. We report a rare case of thyroid MEC which had an aggressive behavior and poor prognosis. This case is a precious in that thyroid MEC occurred during observation of PC and suggests a possibility of the transformation from PC to MEC.