Unusual presentation of tuberculosis reactivation in childhood: an anterior neck mass.

Although extrapulmonary tuberculosis has a broad spectrum of clinical manifestations, involvement of the thyroid gland in children has been reported very rarely. The authors report a case of an 11-year-old girl with a nontender nodular swelling of the thyroid, whose symptoms, tomographic and scintigraphic features, mimicked a nodule with a cystic component. Although seldom observed, tuberculosis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of nodular lesions of the thyroid in children, especially in the patient with known history of exposure to tuberculosis.