Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. May 26, 2021; 9(15): 3662-3667
Published online May 26, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i15.3662
Needle tract seeding of papillary thyroid carcinoma after fine-needle capillary biopsy: A case report
Liu-Hong Shi, Liang Zhou, Yin-Jiao Lei, Lian Xia, Lei Xie
Liu-Hong Shi, Liang Zhou, Lei Xie, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, Affiliated Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310016, Zhejiang Province, China
Yin-Jiao Lei, Department of Pathology, Affiliated Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310016, Zhejiang Province, China
Lian Xia, Department of Nursing, Affiliated Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310016, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Xie L conceived and designed the study; Shi LH, Zhou L, Xia L and Xie L contributed to the treatment of the case; Lei YJ performed the histological examination and confirmed the diagnosis; Xia L collected and analyzed data; Shi LH and Zhou L wrote the manuscript; Xie L revised the article and supervised the project; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Informed consent statement: Consent was obtained from the patient for 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: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Lei Xie, MD, Attending Doctor, Chief Doctor, Professor, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, Affiliated Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 3 Qingchun Road East, Hangzhou 310016, Zhejiang Province, China. xielsrrsh@zju.edu.cn
Received: November 11, 2020
Peer-review started: November 11, 2020
First decision: January 24, 2021
Revised: February 6, 2021
Accepted: March 9, 2021
Article in press: March 9, 2021
Published online: May 26, 2021
Processing time: 173 Days and 23.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Needle tract seeding (NTS) of tumor cells is rare. Given that NTS is mainly caused by fine-needle aspiration biopsy rather than fine-needle capillary biopsy (FNCB), the FNCB-derived deposit of tumor cells has never been reported in papillary thyroid carcinoma. Here, we present a case of NTS caused by FNCB in a papillary thyroid carcinoma patient and performed whole-genome sequencing of the NTS-derived lesion. In this case, subtle changes in the patient’s thyroglobulin and thyroglobulin antibodies were observed. Importantly, the information presented here will help improve the understanding of this disease.