The difficulties encountered with a cancer evolving from a thyroglossal cyst include the following. First, diagnosis is usually made during surgery or from the definitive pathologic samples.

Your daughter's cyst sounds like a thyroglossal duct cyst. This is a defect which is present from birth but does not show itself until later in childhood, most commonly in preschools aged children ...

Hence, a total thyroidectomy was performed. The histologic report was papillary carcinoma of the thyroglossal duct cyst with invasion to the cyst wall and papillary carcinoma of the thyroid gland ...