Brain metastasis from papillary thyroid carcinomas

Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common type of thyroid carcinoma and has a relatively favorable prognosis. PTC brain metastases are rare, occurring in 0.1–5% of cases in previous studies. In the present study, we treated 5 cases of PTC brain metastasis in our institute and retrospectively evaluated these patients. A retrospective database was generated from the patient medical records of our institution for the years between 1976 and 2011. The mean patient age at diagnosis was 64.6 years and the average duration from PTC resection to the detection of a brain metastasis using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) was 91.7 months. The patients were treated with various combinations of surgery and radiation therapy. All 5 patients died and the mean overall survival following the diagnosis of a brain metastasis was 9.0 months. One patient succumbed to an intratumoral hemorrhage of the metastatic brain tumor. The remaining patients died following metastasis to other organs. Our findings suggest that PTC brain metastases may occur at the end-stage of patient treatment and result in an unfavorable prognosis. Patients with brain metastases also succumbed to the development of metastases to the fetal organs rather than brain.