Distant metastasis occurs occasionally in differentiated thyroid cancer patients, with the lungs and bones being the most frequent locations. An extremely rare location of distant metastasis is the pancreas, as reported in only 16 published cases.
In this article we report a case with pancreatic metastases from thyroid papillary carcinoma. A 71-year-old woman underwent total thyroidectomy for thyroid papillary carcinoma with lung metastases. While the patient was undergoing TSH suppression therapy, the thyroid cancer spread to the pancreas. She began receiving Lenvatinib, a molecular-targeted drug, which was very effective, and the lung and pancreatic metastases diminished during 15 months.
In rare cases like pancreatic metastasis from differentiated thyroid cancer, the standard of care is unclear. If the case has a condition that cannot be removed with surgery, or cannot be treated by RAI therapy, we believe that molecular-targeted drugs might be a good treatment as one of the choices.