Splenectomy for Solitary Splenic Metastasis in Recurrent PapillaryThyroid Cancer. A Case Report and Literature Review

Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy, presenting with 23 500 new cases per year in the United States. About7-23% of the patients will present recurrent metastases disease during follow-up. The classic variant of papillary carcinoma is lessaggressive compared to its other variants like diffuse sclerosing, tall cell or columnar cell, and insular variants, and the sites to whichthis metastasizes is already well identified. Metastasis to the spleen is an extremely rare manifestation of papillary thyroid cancer. Todate, only 3 cases have been reported in the literature. Herein, we present a 52-year-old male, who developed spleen metastases, 2.4years after total thyroidectomy and central neck dissection followed by radioactive iodine ablation and seven months aftertreatment with sorafenib for lung metastases. The splenic lesion was detected in surveillance studies. This case highlights thatsplenic metastasis, although rare, may occur even in a patient with a locoregional and systemic controlled thyroid cancer andthat it can be treated safely with surgical resection.