15643              METASTATIC CARCINOMA IN THE THYROID

The patient was a woman aged 44 with a short history of diffuse enlargement of the thyroid and a snow-storm type of chest X-ray picture. A previous chest X-ray 5 months before was normal.  At postmortem massive neoplastic deposits were found in the hilar glands of the lung and in upper abdominal lymph nodes. There was a left tubo-ovarian mass and apparently an intracervical uterine carcinoma.

The specimen consists of the tongue, larynx, trachea and thyroid. The thyroid is uniformly and smoothly enlarged by lobular neoplastic infiltrates forming strands, cords and masses well seen on the cut surface. Histology showed anaplastic squamous carcinoma with many tumour giant cells. The exact site of the primary tumour must be regarded as uncertain, but was probably in the lung or the cervix.