Does thyroid cancer affect pregnancy

Does thyroid cancer affect pregnancy? Compared with other cancers, thyroid cancer is very common, and the main incidence of this cancer is still mostly women, and there is no particular age difference, that is to say, women of childbearing age are also likely to suffer from thyroid cancer, and patients are very worried about fertility issues. So does thyroid cancer affect pregnancy?

First, let's understand the impact of pregnancy on thyroid cancer. This question can be divided into the following questions to answer.

1. Does pregnancy increase the incidence of thyroid cancer?

During pregnancy, a series of physiological changes will occur in women, such as a significant increase in estrogen and human chorionic gonadotropin levels, and the formation of a maternal "immune immunity" state. Can this situation lead to the occurrence of thyroid cancer?

In response to this issue, scholars from Western Europe and Japan conducted a cohort follow-up study, which concluded that pregnancy is not a risk factor for increased incidence of thyroid cancer unless there are multiple pregnancies.

2. Does pregnancy affect the growth and malignant transformation of thyroid nodules?

Scholars from the United States, Hong Kong, China, Turkey and other places have conducted research, and the results are: the number of relevant studies is still small, and the conclusions are inconsistent. More research is still needed on the changes in the size, number, and ratio of benign and malignant nodules during pregnancy.

3. Does pregnancy accelerate the progression of thyroid cancer?

This issue can be discussed from three different periods and states:

(1) Thyroid cancer has been diagnosed and treated before pregnancy.

If the patient has been treated and is disease-free before pregnancy, pregnancy itself does not cause disease progression or recurrence. A case-control study in 2013 showed that for thyroid cancer patients who were disease-free after treatment, there was no significant difference in the rate of disease recurrence regardless of whether they were pregnant or not.

(2) Thyroid cancer was diagnosed before pregnancy and has not yet received treatment.

There are very few women who know they have thyroid cancer before pregnancy and still want to get pregnant, so research is difficult. The only report available so far is from Japan, which concluded that pregnancy may cause untreated thyroid micropapillary carcinoma (MPTC) to grow.

(3) Thyroid cancer diagnosed during pregnancy.

There are two different opinions: one is that there is no effect on the long-term prognosis of female PTC patients diagnosed during pregnancy and non-pregnancy; the other opinion is that there is an effect, and the proportion of persistent or recurrent thyroid cancer lesions is significantly increased.