Differentiation of lymph-node metastases by anti-CEA immunoscintigraphy in a patient with follicular thyroid and breast cancer.

Supraclavicular lymph node metastases appeared in a female patient six years after thyroidectomy, radioiodine therapy and external radiation for a follicular thyroid carcinoma and four years after mastectomy and lymphadenectomy for an invasive ductal breast cancer. It was not possible either by conventional imaging methods or by serological methods, to assign the metastases to one of the two primary tumors. Anti-CEA immunoscintigraphy and SPECT of the cervicothoracic region showed a circumscribed pathological uptake of 99mTc-labeled anti-CEA antibodies in the area of the supraclavicular lymph nodes. The preoperative suspicion of lymph-node infiltration by CEA-expressing breast cancer cells was confirmed histologically after surgical removal of the lymph nodes.