Goiter

For pathology of the neck I decided to research goiters. I have never actually seen one while working in CT but thought it might be interesting to find out more about them. While doing my research, I had a hard time finding any radiologic images but did actually find a LOT of regular pictures of people with goiters. I never realized how big they could get!!

The CT image above shows a large goiter that is actually compressing this patient's trachea and making breathing very difficult.

The two most common causes of a goiter are a lack of iodine in the diet or more frequently for people here in the United States, an overproduction of thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH.

Goiters can cause several types of complications including compression or the esophagus and trachea which could mean difficulty swallowing or breathing. Other problems can include a cough that won't go away or changes in the pitch of a person's voice.

Treatments for goiter can be as simple as medication to control TSH production or even surgery to remove the goiter. The problem with using medication as a treatment is that it usually will not shrink the goiter, but instead prevent it from growing any larger. In this case, surgery would be the treatment option of choice.

I found the information for this blog on endocrineweb.com.