Is it better to do iodine 131 treatment for thyroid cancer as early as possible? What are the benefits and harms of iodine 131 treatment for thyroid cancer?

No, it is generally best to do treatment one month after surgery, because you need to stop taking the medicine for a month before you can do iodine treatment. Generally, before you start taking iodine-131, you only need to take Euthyrox.

Iodine-131 is a supplemental treatment for patients who meet the indications after total thyroidectomy. It cannot be used as a substitute for incomplete or insufficient surgery. The following are three reasons for iodine-131 treatment: 1. It destroys thyroid tissue that may be involved (so-called thyroid ablation), thereby increasing the sensitivity of iodine-131 whole-body scans and the specificity of thyroglobulin as a test for residual or recurrent tumors; 2. It can destroy hidden or tiny cancer foci and reduce the possibility of long-term recurrence (i.e., ablation); 3. It makes it possible to perform a whole-body scan of iodine-131 after ablation, which is a very sensitive method for detecting the persistence of tumors.

Iodine-131 therapy should be applied selectively after surgery. Not all patients with follicular cell-derived thyroid cancer can benefit from Iodine-131 therapy. For patients in the extremely low-risk group, surgery alone can achieve excellent long-term prognosis, and Iodine-131 ablation therapy is not recommended. Routine preventive cleaning of all patients with papillary carcinoma (the principle of routine surgery in this treatment group) can save some patients from Iodine-131 treatment. However, patients with residual cancer or high-risk groups should be routinely treated with Iodine-131, which may reduce the recurrence rate and mortality rate.