About 1 in 100 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with thyroid cancer in their lifetime. Nearly 3 times as many women as men are diagnosed with the disease. The good news is that even if you have thyroid cancer, the likelihood of cure is high with proper treatment. More than 98% of thyroid cancer patients will live at least five years after initial diagnosis; most live much longer and will die because of some other cause.
Because surgery is a keystone of thyroid cancer treatment, it is important to seek out a well-experienced team of endocrine surgeons such as the one you will find at UW Health.
Our endocrine surgery team is one of the largest in the U.S. All seven surgeons are fellowship-trained, which is the highest level of education possible for a medical specialty. Most patients go home a few hours after surgery and recover quickly.
Because thyroid nodules are small, slow-growing and painless, it’s more likely that a medical professional will discover a nodule. If the nodule gets large enough, you may be able to feel it yourself through the skin on your neck.
Other signs of possible thyroid cancer include:
Swallowing difficulty
Hoarseness or unusual changes in your voice
Pain in your neck or throat
Swollen lymph nodes
Persistent cough
They are likely to order one or more of these tests:
Blood tests, which can determine if your thyroid is producing sufficient hormone levels
Biopsy in which a doctor takes a small sample of cells from a suspicious thyroid nodule so they can be examined under a microscope to see whether cancer is present
Radioiodine scan, which is done by swallowing a pill that contains a safe amount of radioactive iodine
Imaging, usually an ultrasound, presents a better picture of what is going on in the thyroid. Occasionally, you may need other imaging such as a CT or PET scan.
Types of thyroid cancer
There are four primary types of thyroid cancer:
Papillary thyroid cancer is the most common, accounting for about 80% of cases. The survival rate papillary thyroid cancer is excellent, although up to 20% of patients may experience a recurrence later in life.
Follicular thyroid cancer represents up to 15% of cases. It is found more often in countries with insufficient dietary intake of iodine. While most patients do well with treatment, follicular thyroid cancer tends to be more aggressive than papillary.
Medullary thyroid cancer accounts for between 2% and 4% of cases. About 25% of patients with this form have a family history of thyroid cancer.
Anaplastic thyroid cancer, the rarest form, is the most aggressive type of thyroid cancer and can quickly spread to the neck and other parts of the body.
The most common thyroid cancer treatments are:
Surgery is the most common treatment. Depending on the size and location of the tumor, the surgeon can remove the entire thyroid (thyroidectomy) or part of it (lobectomy). If your entire thyroid is removed, you will need to take a daily hormone pill so your body receives the essential hormones that you used to produce naturally. If only part of your thyroid is removed, it is possible that you may not need to take hormone pills. That will depend on how well your thyroid functions after surgery.
Radioiodine therapy involves swallowing a pill that contains a safe amount of radioactive iodine. This technique is more commonly used if the tumor is large or the cancer has spread to the neighboring lymph nodes.
Radiation therapy is when you have a beam of radiation precisely directed to the tumor with the goal of destroying the cancer cells. This is only needed in rare cancers where the tumor is very aggressive or cannot be removed with surgery.
Targeted therapy includes medications that can target the specific mutations that the thyroid cancer has. This treatment is rarely needed, but can be helpful if the tumor has spread outside of the neck or is not responding to radioactive iodine treatment.
Our team is at the forefront of the field, using several advanced techniques such as surgeon-performed ultrasound and intraoperative nerve monitoring. Because UW Health is an academic medical center, part of our mission includes training the next generation of endocrine surgeons and endocrinologists, using the latest advances to ensure world-class care for our patients.
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