Unusual Manifestation of Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer

The most frequent clinical manifestation of anaplastic thyroid cancer is a rapidly enlarging mass at the frontal part of the neck. It is accompanied by severe compression symptoms such as dysphagia and dyspnoea with hoarseness, which could be partially due to paresis of the recurrent laryngeal nerve. We treated a patient with symptoms consistent with a retropharyngeal abscess – swelling of the posterior pharyngeal wall, odynophagia, pain in the left side of the neck, elevated inflammatory markers. The diagnosis of anaplastic thyroid cancer was unexpectedly made after surgery and a subsequent histological examination.