Commonly Diagnosed Thyroid Cancer Not Cancer At All

Encapsulated Follicular Variant of Papillary Thyroid Cancer is a common form of thyroid cancer that often leads to removal of the thyroid and radiation treatment. The problem is, it’s not a cancer at all. . . .

Encapsulated Follicular Variant of Papillary Thyroid Cancer affects about 10,000 of the roughly 65,000 people diagnosed with thyroid cancer each year in the United States and about 45,000 peope world wide.

But a recent study has concluded that this common form of thyroid cancer is not, it turns out, a cancer at all. That means that tens of thousands of people a year received radiation therapy that was never necessary and now realized to have only been harmful.

The research was conducted by an international panel of experts put together by the National Cancer Institute and was reported in JAMA Oncology.

JAMA Oncol 2016;doi:10.1001/jamaoncol/2016.0386