How long can a person with thyroid cancer survive?

Thyroid cancer is a malignant tumor that originates from the thyroid follicular epithelium or parafollicular cells. It often presents as a painless neck mass in clinical practice. The survival time of thyroid cancer patients is not fixed and needs to be comprehensively judged based on multiple factors such as pathological stage, lesion size, and treatment effect. The 5-year survival rate is usually 89.5%.

1. Pathological staging: Clinically, according to the TNM staging standard of thyroid cancer, thyroid cancer can be divided into stage I, stage II, stage III, and stage IV. If it is early thyroid cancer, the cancer is limited to the thyroid gland and has not yet metastasized. After active and effective treatment, the 5-year survival rate is 90.5%. If it is mid-to-late stage thyroid cancer, the cancer cells have metastasized to distant places and surgical resection is not possible at this time, the 5-year survival rate is 60.7%. If it is late stage thyroid cancer, even bone metastasis and lung metastasis have occurred, the 5-year survival rate is only 27.4%;

2. Lesion size: If the lesion can be completely removed and is relatively small, without lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis, the patient's long-term survival time is relatively long, up to 5 years or even longer. If the lesion of thyroid cancer is relatively large, or even has invaded the trachea, esophagus and other parts, it is difficult to completely remove it during surgery, which may cause recurrence and metastasis, and the patient's survival time is relatively short, and death may occur within 1-2 years;

3. Treatment effect: After active and effective treatment, some patients' thyroid cancer can be cured and their survival time is no different from that of normal people. However, if the patient does not actively receive treatment or the treatment effect is poor, it may affect the patient's life span and the survival time may be shorter, even less than 1 year;

4. Other factors: In addition to the above factors, the specific survival time of thyroid cancer is also related to the patient's own physical fitness, mental state, whether active treatment is taken, etc. It is recommended that patients maintain a good attitude, face the disease correctly, and build confidence in overcoming the disease.