Can thyroid cancer be cured? What are the commonly used treatments for thyroid cancer?

Almost all thyroid cancer patients will feel shocked when they first hear that they have thyroid cancer, just like other cancer patients. In severe cases, they will feel hopeless. So, can thyroid cancer be cured? In fact, most thyroid cancer patients can be cured, which is lucky compared to other cancer patients.

Can thyroid cancer be cured?

The treatment of thyroid cancer is mainly surgical resection, with total thyroidectomy as the main surgical procedure. A small number of patients with papillary thyroid cancer may consider only single-lobectomy because the tumor is small, confined to the thyroid tissue, and has no local or remote metastasis. Patients with well-differentiated thyroid cancer will receive radioactive iodine treatment after total thyroidectomy to eliminate residual thyroid or remote metastatic cells after surgery.

Compared with other cancer treatments, radioactive iodine therapy has minimal side effects and is simple and safe. For poorly differentiated and undifferentiated thyroid cancer, because the cells react poorly to radioactive iodine and the prognosis is poor, in addition to surgery, local radiotherapy or chemotherapy will be considered for treatment. Due to the different cell sources of medullary carcinoma, surgery is the main treatment method.

Patients who undergo total resection surgery must take thyroxine to inhibit thyroid stimulating hormone and avoid the stimulation of thyroid stimulating hormone on follicular cells, which can effectively reduce the chance of recurrence. Therefore, the patient's compliance with thyroxine is very important. Thyroglobulin is a protein secreted by thyroid follicular cells. The concentration of thyroglobulin in the blood can reflect the amount of residual thyroid cells in the body and is an important indicator for tracking patients with well-differentiated thyroid cancer. In addition, neck ultrasound examination and whole-body scan with radioactive iodine are also regular and commonly used tracking tools.

Most thyroid cancer patients have a good prognosis after surgery and radioactive iodine treatment, with a 10-year survival rate of more than 90%. If the patient is under 45 years old when diagnosed, the prognosis will be even better, and thyroid cancer will hardly affect his life.

Most patients have a good prognosis

Apart from an extra scar on the neck, thyroid cancer patients live the same life as ordinary people. There is no need to worry too much about thyroid cancer affecting your life. Don’t let thyroid cancer affect your life. You should treat thyroid cancer as a friend that coexists with you.

The lack of understanding or even misunderstanding of thyroid cancer by the patients’ family members or friends is one of the factors that affect the patients’ mood. Often, after explanations, the patients can feel at ease and get rid of their fears. However, some family members or friends will tell the patients not to eat this or do that. Sometimes, they will even look at the patients as if they have entered the terminal stage of cancer. These attitudes will invisibly have a great negative impact on the patients’ mood.

With proper treatment, most thyroid cancers can be cured. Knowing this, there is no need to panic. Instead, you should be grateful that the illness has made you pay more attention to your health.