Pancreatic metastasis from papillary thyroid carcinoma: Case report and literature review

Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common type of thyroid malignancy. Papillary thyroid carcinoma generally spreads locally to the cervical lymph nodes, but distant metastases are seen in 5%-7% of cases. Most distant metastases occur in the bone, lung, and brain. Pancreatic metastases of PTC are extremely rare. Herein we present a patient with PTC treated with total thyroidectomy and two rounds of radioactive iodine (RAI) ablation that was subsequently found to have a pancreaticmetastasis detected on fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (¹⁸ F-FDG PET/CT) imaging 3 years from the initial diagnosis.