chest pain after RAI ablation

[helsurf]

Hi dr,

i have just had I131 ablation after being diagnosed with papillary carcinoma of thyroid, the day after my treatment i noted my neck was swollen and tender but i also had an achy dull pain in my chest especially if i coughed, yawned sneezed etc. which i definately didn't have before i had the treatment.

when i had my whole body scan, they reviewed the pictures and i was called back in as they wanted to get another image of my chest area.

i was sent away without being told anything and was wondering if the pain in chest and the fact they wanted to scan chest twice could mean there could be some kind of lung metastisis?

i am also told my radiation levels are still quite high after 5 days.

any ideas would be great!

Thankyou!

[helsurf]

thankyou Dr,

i'm a bit confused as my hypo brain can't comprehend much at the moment,

the pain definately was not heartburn, felt more like the pain associated with a chest infection and lasted about 2 days.

am awaiting the result of WBS but will not get them untill i see my oncologist in 3 weeks time.

i probably wouldn't be concerned about the chest pain if they hadn't called me back in after my WBS to take another image of the chest area.

thankyou anyway.

[estrelinha]

My comment was for the other forum , correct me if I am wrong

[estrelinha]

I think he is trying to understand why your radiation was still high after 5 days (captation-means tyroid tissue somewhere), so two possibilities:
1 -The possibility of having the presence of thyroid tissue  in your lungs (which he think it is less likely ,but always a possibility ( it is rare)
2 - More likely he thinks the radiation  is there because of the presence of residual thyroid tissue in your neck (lymph nodes ), but it depends on the amount.
But because of the rare possibility to spread, he recomends a whole body scan. He says what doctors should expect in a normal exam (just uptake in the thyroid bed)

And because chest pain is not common, possibly he thinks it is Heartburn, not related with the treatment (usually associated with regurgitation of gastric acid).
Hope I didn't get you confused, but I think I got what he's trying to say

[Mark Lupo, M.D.]

Chest pain is not common - may be heartburn.  But must be concerned about the amount of residual neck thyroid tissue (and possibly lymph nodes) as well as the less likely possibility of spread to the chest area -- will be important to look at the whole body scan and any abnormality there would need CT scan / Ultrasound evaluation.  We expect to see uptake in the thyroid bed - but otherwise the neck should not have significant uptake.