Pituitary Metastases from Thyroid Carcinoma: Case Series and Literature Review

Authors

  • Brett A. Fadrique Texas Tech University, Lubbock, USA
  • Levi Sanchez Ramirez Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA
  • Trevor Abts Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, USA
  • Salmaan Ahmed
  • J. Matthew Debnam Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3941/jrcr.5557

Abstract

Metastases to the pituitary gland are extremely rare. Most of the reported cases arise from breast and lung cancer, with metastases from thyroid cancer seldom reported. Thyroid cancer metastases to the pituitary gland may occur as the initial presentation of metastatic disease or part of widespread disease and may occur years after the primary thyroid cancer diagnosis. Herein, we present three cases of thyroid cancer that metastasized to the pituitary gland and review the literature to address its clinical and radiologic features, prognosis, treatment, and differential diagnosis.

 

A 61-year-old male with a pituitary metastasis from papillary thyroid carcinoma. (A,B) Coronal and sagittal T1 post-contrast MRIs show a homogenously enhancing metastasis involving the pituitary gland with narrowing of the mass at the diaphragma sella and thickening of the infundibulum (arrows). (C) Axial T1 post-contrast MRI shows metastases in the brain parenchyma (white arrows) and the pituitary infundibulum (black arrow).

Downloads

Published

2025-02-28

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 2 (2025)

Section

General Radiology

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Journal of Radiology Case Reports

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The publisher holds the copyright to the published articles and contents. However, the articles in this journal are open-access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License, which permits reproduction and distribution, provided the original work is properly cited. The publisher and author have the right to use the text, images and other multimedia contents from the submitted work for further usage in affiliated programs. Commercial use and derivative works are not permitted, unless explicitly allowed by the publisher.