Giessen H, Nebiker CA, Bruehlmeier M, Spreitzer S, Mueller B, Schuetz P. Do you want to participate in a clinical study as a healthy control? - Risk or benefit? World J Clin Cases 2017; 5(12): 437-439 [PMID: 29291203 DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v5.i12.437]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Dr. Philipp Schuetz, MD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Tellstrasse 1, Aarau 5000, Switzerland. philipp.schuetz@ksa.ch
Research Domain of This Article
Medicine, Research & Experimental
Article-Type of This Article
Case Report
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Clin Cases. Dec 16, 2017; 5(12): 437-439 Published online Dec 16, 2017. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v5.i12.437
Do you want to participate in a clinical study as a healthy control? - Risk or benefit?
Hanna Giessen, Christian A Nebiker, Matthias Bruehlmeier, Stefan Spreitzer, Beat Mueller, Philipp Schuetz
Hanna Giessen, Beat Mueller, Philipp Schuetz, Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Christian A Nebiker, Department of Surgery, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Matthias Bruehlmeier, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Stefan Spreitzer, Department of Pathology, Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau 5000, Switzerland
Author contributions: Giessen H and Schuetz P contributed to drafting the manuscript; Nebiker CA, Bruehlmeier M, Spreitzer S and Mueller B contributed to revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content.
Informed consent statement: The patient involved in this study gave her written informed consent authorizing use.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All contributing authors have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence or bias their work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Philipp Schuetz, MD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau, Tellstrasse 1, Aarau 5000, Switzerland. philipp.schuetz@ksa.ch
Telephone: +41-62-8386812
Received: May 14, 2017 Peer-review started: May 17, 2017 First decision: July 5, 2017 Revised: November 3, 2017 Accepted: November 10, 2017 Article in press: November 10, 2017 Published online: December 16, 2017
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Case characteristics
Medullary thyroid cancer is a rare cancer that can present with an increased circumference of the throat or a change in voice but is mostly asymptomatic.
Clinical diagnosis
Most medullary carcinoma (MCT) occur sporadic, but in 20% a hereditary pattern (multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, men 2) is present, a mutation of the RET protooncogene can be found.
Differential diagnosis
MTC is likely to spread lymphogenic to paratracheal and lateral cervical lymph nodes or hematogenous in liver, lungs and bones.
Treatment
The only curative treatment is the total thyroidectomie with removal of all affected tissue in the neck.
Related reports
Systemic chemotherapy with dacarbazine, 5-fluoruracil or doxorubicin has shown a poor response in only 10%-20%.
Experiences and lessons
Regular measurements of serum calcitonin as tumor marker is used and remission is demonstrated by undetectable serum calcitonin.
