Renal metastases from papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Papillary thyroid carcinoma is the most common type of thyroid cancer. It is estimated that 4% to 20% of patients with papillary carcinoma will develop distant metastases during the course of their disease, most commonly to lung and bones. We describe the rare occurrence of metastatic papillary carcinoma of the thyroid to the kidney in a living patient that was successfully treated with a right radical nephrectomy and 131I with complete disappearance of all metastatic disease.