Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Dec 16, 2017; 5(12): 437-439
Published online Dec 16, 2017. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v5.i12.437
Do you want to participate in a clinical study as a healthy control? - Risk or benefit?
Hanna Giessen, Christian A Nebiker, Matthias Bruehlmeier, Stefan Spreitzer, Beat Mueller, Philipp Schuetz
Hanna Giessen, Beat Mueller, Philipp Schuetz, Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Christian A Nebiker, Department of Surgery, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Matthias Bruehlmeier, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Stefan Spreitzer, Department of Pathology, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Author contributions: Giessen H and Schuetz P contributed to drafting the manuscript; Nebiker CA, Bruehlmeier M, Spreitzer S and Mueller B contributed to revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content.
Informed consent statement: The patient involved in this study gave her written informed consent authorizing use.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All contributing authors have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence or bias their work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Philipp Schuetz, MD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Tellstrasse 1, Aarau 5000, Switzerland. philipp.schuetz@ksa.ch
Telephone: +41-62-8386812
Received: May 14, 2017
Peer-review started: May 17, 2017
First decision: July 5, 2017
Revised: November 3, 2017
Accepted: November 10, 2017
Article in press: November 10, 2017
Published online: December 16, 2017
Processing time: 206 Days and 20 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Case characteristics

Medullary thyroid cancer is a rare cancer that can present with an increased circumference of the throat or a change in voice but is mostly asymptomatic.

Clinical diagnosis

Most medullary carcinoma (MCT) occur sporadic, but in 20% a hereditary pattern (multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, men 2) is present, a mutation of the RET protooncogene can be found.

Differential diagnosis

MTC is likely to spread lymphogenic to paratracheal and lateral cervical lymph nodes or hematogenous in liver, lungs and bones.

Treatment

The only curative treatment is the total thyroidectomie with removal of all affected tissue in the neck.

Related reports

Systemic chemotherapy with dacarbazine, 5-fluoruracil or doxorubicin has shown a poor response in only 10%-20%.

Experiences and lessons

Regular measurements of serum calcitonin as tumor marker is used and remission is demonstrated by undetectable serum calcitonin.