Papillary thyroid cancer with pulmonary metastases beginning in childhood: clinical course over three decades.

We present a case of childhood papillary thyroid cancer with persistent but stable pulmonary metastases for over three decades in order to highlight the natural history and clinical features of this unusual disease entity. A nine-year-old girl had thyroidectomy and cervical lymph node dissection followed by neck irradiation for invasive papillary thyroid cancer. Diffuse pulmonary metastases were present at the time of diagnosis and were treated with radioactive iodine 10 and 30 years later; both the chest radiographs and the patient remained stable throughout. This case illustrates the potential indolence of thyroid cancer when it presents during childhood.