A Case of Ectopic Lateral Cervical Thymic Cyst Mimicking as a Second Branchial Cleft Cyst

Hyun Gi Gim; Mee Sook Roh; Jong Chul Hong; Heon Soo Park

doi:10.11106/ijt.2017.10.2.123

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Gim, Roh, Hong, and Park: A Case of Ectopic Lateral Cervical Thymic Cyst Mimicking as a Second Branchial Cleft Cyst

Case Report

International Journal of Thyroidology 2017; 10(2): 123-126.

Published online: 29 November 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.11106/ijt.2017.10.2.123

A Case of Ectopic Lateral Cervical Thymic Cyst Mimicking as a Second Branchial Cleft Cyst

Hyun Gi Gim¹, Mee Sook Roh², Jong Chul Hong¹, Heon Soo Park¹

¹Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Dong-A University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea.

²Department of Pathology, Dong-A University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea.

Correspondence: Heon Soo Park, MD, PhD, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Dong-A University Hospital, 26 Daesingongwon-ro, Seo-gu, Busan 49201, Korea. Tel: 82-51-240-5423, Fax: 82-51-253-0712, hspark1@dau.ac.kr

Received 9 March 2017 Revised 4 July 2017 Accepted 14 July 2017

The Korean Thyroid Association

(open-access):

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Cervical thymic cysts are rare lesions of neck mass often misdiagnosed clinically as branchial cleft cyst and are mostly diagnosed, pathologically after surgery. The authors applied surgical resection to a 34-year-old man with right upper neck mass, which was misdiagnosed preoperatively as a second branchial cleft cyst. The pathological tissue examination result showed that the patient was diagnosed with a cervical thymic cyst. The thymic cyst of the lateral neck has not been reported from adult in Korean. Herein, we present the case with review of the related literature.

Keywords: Thymus gland, Thymic cyst, Neck

Figures and Tables

Fig. 1

About 1.8×1.3 cm sized, central low attenuation lesion is found in the right carotid space (A, noncontrast computed tomography, B, enhanced computed tomography).

Fig. 2

(A) Microscopic view shows degenerating Hassall's corpuscles within thymic lymphoid tissue (H&E staining, ×20, arrow).(B) The Hassall's corpuscle is seen (H&E staining, ×200, arrow).

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