Breast cancer metastases to thyroid gland: our experience and review of literature

Metastases to the thyroid gland are very rare occurrence. It is,usually, found in kidney cancer, in breast cancer, lung cancer and malignant melanoma. We report a case of a 63-year old female patient with breast cancer diagnosed in 2003. Patient underwent lumpectomy, axillary dissection and ipsilateral radiotherapy. The patient also received adjuvant postoperative chemotherapy. Eight years later, the patient came to our observation with a palpable nodule in the thyroid gland and left axillary lymphadenopathy. She was subjected to total thyroidectomy; the extemporaneous histological examination confirmed the diagnosis of thyroid metastases from breast cancer. The patient was,also,subjected to radical left mastectomy with radical axillary dissection. Ten months later, appeared bone metastases, mediastinal lymphadenopathy and pleural effusion. This suggests that whenever there is a thyroid disease in patients with a history of malignancy in another place should not exclude the possibility that it is a secondary disease.