Ectopic thyroid gland. A clinical study of 30 children and review.

Of 108 children being treated at our Institute for primary (nongoitrous) hypothyroidism, tests with radioactive iodine 131I uptake showed that 26 of them (24%) had an ectopic thyroid gland. Four euthyroid children also had anterior swellings of the neck which, in each case, proved to be an ectopic thyroid gland. Of the 30 children studied, 20 were girls and 10 were boys. Nine patients were diagnosed within the first year of life. Growth retardation, manifest in 20 patients, was the most common clinical finding at the time of diagnosis. Delayed bone age was a feature in all of them. Growth, after diagnosis was within normal limits in 83% of the infants who were treated within the first two years of life; only 50% of the children diagnosed later grew within normal limits. Similarly, mental function was best preserved in those patients in whom treatment was initiated within the first two years of life.