Thyroid Cancer on the Rise: A Real Worry or Just Better Diagnosis?
The number of thyroid cancer cases per year has doubled since 1970, although the total tally is still relatively small compared to other cancers and survival rates are high. Less than 5% of the 35,000 people diagnosed with a thyroid tumor in the US die from this relatively slow growing cancer.
Still, the gradual increase in thyroid cancer cases prompted various research groups to examine the cause. One study in 2006 from Dartmouth College asked whether thyroid cancer really was on the rise or whether doctors were just getting better at detecting smaller tumors that may have gone unnoticed in previous decades.
The authors Drs. Louise Davies and H. Gilbert Welch concluded in their article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association “increasing incidence reflects increased detection of subclinical disease, not an increase in the true occurrence of thyroid cancer. “
The researchers found that nearly 50% of the thyroid cancer cases between 1973 and 2002 involved tumors that were small—less than one centimeter—and were largely non-aggressive types of thyroid cancer.
