Cervical nodes. First symptom of the ''occult'' papillary thyroid carcinoma

It is generally admitted, that the ''occult'' papillary carcinomas are small tumors of the thyroid gland of less then 1.0 cm in diameter, with or without cervical lymph nodes metastases. The primary lesion is usually not palpable. In this report we present nine cases to illustrate this entity. No patient had a history of irradiation to the head and neck. None had a palpable nodule or abnormal thyroid scan results, and the diagnosis of thyroid cancer was based only on the enlarged cervical lymph nodes after their removal and histological examination. All patients underwent total thyroidectomy and small (less then 1.0 cm), invasive papillary cancers with metastases to cervical nodes were found at the time of thyroidectomy. in spite of the presence of cervical metastases the survival rate is higher then in largest papillary cancers without metastases.