A 62-year-old woman with a suspected thyroid nodule

A 62-year-old woman with past medical history of cavernous sinus meningioma presented with an incidentally discovered apparent thyroid nodule. An ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration recovered mature squamous cells, filamentous bacteria, and vegetable matter, consistent with orophagyngeal contents. Subsequent clinical and further radiologic workup revealed a Killian-Jamieson diverticulum. This type of diverticulum is related to Zenker diverticulum and represents the out-pouchings in the wall of the cervical esophagus in the vicinity of the thyroid gland. There are several case reports of Zenker diverticulum presenting radiographically as a thyroid nodule. To our knowledge, such radiographic presentation with cytopathologic findings has not been previously described in patients with Killian-Jamieson diverticulum.