A Changing Pattern of Isotope Scan of the Midline Ectopic Thyroid: A Case Report

ABSTRACT

A 17 month-old girl presented in the pediatric clinic on November 27th, 1990 with a neck mass. The mass was 2 cm in diameter, firm in consistency and movable on the upper pole of the thyroid cartilage in the midline. The technetium thyroid scan showed a hot reactivity at the compatible site of the mass, but no other radioactivity in either site of the normal thyroid positions. At her second visit on January 23th, 1996, the mass had enlarged up to 3.5cm in diameter in the same location of the neck. The follow up thyroid scan revealed a walnut sized, snowman-like radioactivity. One of the snowman-like double images seemed to be a lingual ectopic thyroid and the other a midline ectopic thyroid remnant in the infrahyoid level. This interpretation was supported by the computed tomography of the neck, which showed a ligual mass in the foramen cecum area and an another mass in the anterior comis-sure of the larynx in the mildline. Thyroid function test was normal except a slightly increased TSH. As a result of this changing pattern of thyroid radioactive images, a case of a lingual thyroid as well as another midline ectopic thyroid tissue at the infra hyoid level is reported.