What kind of disease is thyroid cancer

What kind of disease is thyroid cancer? Thyroid cancer is not uncommon in clinical practice. It is a malignant tumor of the thyroid gland. Therefore, once discovered, patients need to actively and promptly undergo examinations and treatments, because the harm caused by the disease if it is not treated for a long time is immeasurable. In order to let everyone know more about this disease, the following is a detailed introduction to what kind of disease is thyroid cancer?

Thyroid cancer accounts for about 1% of all malignant tumors in the body. Except for medullary carcinoma, most thyroid cancers originate from follicular epithelial cells. In the late stage, hoarseness, breathing and swallowing difficulties, sympathetic nerve compression causing Horner syndrome, invasion of the cervical plexus causing ear, occipital, shoulder pain, and local lymph node and distant organ metastasis may occur.

The discovery of a lump in the thyroid gland, which is hard and fixed in texture and has an uneven surface, is a common manifestation of all types of cancer. The gland has little mobility when swallowing. Undifferentiated cancer may cause the above symptoms in a short period of time. In addition to the obvious growth of the lump, it is also accompanied by the characteristics of invading surrounding tissues. Some patients have no obvious thyroid lump, but when they seek medical treatment because of the discovery of metastatic lesions, they should consider the possibility of thyroid cancer.

Surgical treatment of thyroid cancer includes surgery on the thyroid gland itself and neck lymph node dissection. There is still disagreement on the extent of thyroidectomy, with the smallest range being lobectomy and isthmus resection and the largest being total thyroidectomy. Those who undergo subtotal or total thyroidectomy should take thyroxine tablets for life to prevent hypothyroidism and suppress TSH.

Both papillary adenocarcinoma and follicular adenocarcinoma have TSH receptors, and TSH can affect the growth of thyroid cancer through its receptors. For papillary adenocarcinoma and follicular adenocarcinoma, 131 iodine radiotherapy is used after surgery, which is suitable for patients over 45 years old, multiple cancer foci, locally invasive tumors, and those with distant metastasis.