Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Jul 16, 2022; 10(20): 7171-7177
Published online Jul 16, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i20.7171
Incidental diagnosis of medullary thyroid carcinoma due to persistently elevated procalcitonin in a patient with COVID-19 pneumonia: A case report
Amitabha Saha, Madhusha Mukhopadhyay, Souvik Paul, Arnab Bera, Tapas Bandyopadhyay
Amitabha Saha, Department of Internal Medicine, Critical Care Medicine, Medica Superspecialty Hospital, Kolkata 700099, West Bengal, India
Madhusha Mukhopadhyay, Tapas Bandyopadhyay, Department of Internal Medicine, Medica Superspecialty Hospital, Kolkata 700099, West Bengal, India
Souvik Paul, Arnab Bera, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Medica Superspecialty Hospital, Kolkata 700099, West Bengal, India
Author contributions: Saha A, Paul S, and Bandyopadhyay T took care of the patient; Amitabha Saha A and Mukhopadhyay M conceived the idea for the study; Mukhopadhyay M, Paul S, and Bera A conducted the research and data collection; Mukhopadhyay M, Saha A, Bera A, and Bandyopadhyay T drafted, proofread, and formatted the manuscript; All authors issued final approval for the version to be submitted.
Informed consent statement: Informed written consent was obtained from the patient for the publication of this report and any accompanying images.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Madhusha Mukhopadhyay, DNB, MRCP, Attending Doctor, Staff Physician, Department of Internal Medicine, Medica Superspecialty Hospital, 127 E M Bypass, Nitai Nagar, Kolkata 700099, West Bengal, India. madhusha.mukhopadhyay@rediffmail.com
Received: February 4, 2022
Peer-review started: February 4, 2022
First decision: March 23, 2022
Revised: April 13, 2022
Accepted: May 17, 2022
Article in press: May 17, 2022
Published online: July 16, 2022
Processing time: 150 Days and 7.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Procalcitonin (Pct) is a biomarker used very commonly for infections in our clinical practice. It is routinely used in coronavirus disease 2019-infected patients. In this setting, persistent Pct elevation despite normalization of other inflammatory markers may present a diagnostic dilemma. This case highlights the importance of identifying occult medullary thyroid carcinoma in such situations, which would otherwise have been missed and left untreated. In our patient, this led to proper treatment and a successful outcome.