Giant Intracranial Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma Metastasis Presenting as Apoplexy

Abstract

We present a case of a giant sellar and suprasellar skull base-invasive metastasis from a medullary carcinoma of the thyroid gland. Radiographic features were similar to atypical/malignant meningioma or pituitary macroadenoma. Intracranial metastases from medullary thyroid carcinoma are very rare. Unusual features of our case are discussed.

Apoplexy in sellar metastasis from papillary thyroid cancer: A case report and literature review

“…Pituitary apoplexy typically occurs in macroadenomas and rarely in metastatic lesions; 14 cases have been reported. [4,5,15,19] Reports on the incidence of symptomatic pituitary apoplexy in the pituitary adenoma vary from 0.6% to 9.1%. [24,40] Komninos et al reported that pituitary apoplexy can be seen about 5% of patients with pituitary metastasis.…”

Original article Pituitary metastases from the oncocytic variant of follicular thyroid carcinoma: a and diagnostic dilemmas

“…The correlation between metastases and size of primary thyroid tumor and vascular invasion have been suggested [17]. Only a few cases of pituitary metastases from medullary carcinoma of the thyroid have been reported [9,10,15,44]. Fol licular [33,35,40,43,45].…”

Drosophila cancer models

“…Other tumors can emerge with lower penetrance including pheochromocytomas, parathyroid adenomas, and mucosal neuromas, and collectively this condition is referred to as MEN2 (Hazard et al, 1959; Donis‐Keller et al, 1993; Carlson et al, 1994; Eng et al, 1996). MTCs can be treated by surgery if detected early but often—especially in patients with spontaneous disease—they are diagnosed late, when tumors have already metastasized to distant tissues including the brain, lung and liver (Jimenez et al, 2008; Bobinski et al, 2009). Little was known regarding the mechanisms underlying Ret transformation, nor had a useful chemotherapeutic been identified.…”