Oncological features of sporadic vs. hereditary pediatric medullary thyroid cancer

No genomic data have been put forth that prove beyond a shadow of doubt that sporadic medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) occurs in infancy, childhood, and/or adolescence.

This was a retrospective comparative study of consecutive patients with MTC who had neck surgery at a tertiary center over a 30-year period.

Included were 1252 patients with MTC (337 hereditary and 915 sporadic), of whom 107 (8.5%) were operated before the age of 18 yrs. Only 4 (3.7%) of the 107 pediatric patients, aged 14, 16, 17 and 17 years, had sporadic MTC. These 4 patients, 3 of whom had been referred for completion surgery, revealed much larger thyroid tumors (medians of 20 mm vs. 1.5–5 mm) than the 103 pediatric patients with hereditary MTC. As for extrathyroid extension and nodal metastases, the 4 patients with sporadic MTC were more comparable to the 37 carriers of highest-risk mutations, 31 (84%) of whom were index patients with de novo disease, than to the 66 carriers of high-risk, intermediate-risk, or low-risk RET mutations (25–38% vs. 0–8%, and medians of 9–9.5 vs. 0 node metastases after dissection of more (medians of 72–91.5 vs. 4.5–9) nodes).

Sporadic MTC, arising rarely, if ever, below the age of 14 years, is exceptional in infancy and childhood, and infrequent in adolescence. At diagnosis, it is almost as widely metastatic as hereditary MTC of the highest-risk category which almost always, like sporadic MTC, presents as de novo disease.