||The English used in this article or section may not be easy for everybody to understand. (September 2011)|
Thyroid cancer is cancer in the thyroid gland. There are four forms: papillary, follicular, medullary and anaplastic. The most common forms (papillary and follicular) are slow growing and may happen again but patients under 45 rarely die from it, and the medullary form also has a good prognosis if it only grows in the gland and a poorer prognosis if it has spread; the anaplastic form is fast-growing and responds poorly to therapy.
Thyroid nodules are diagnosed by ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (USG/FNA) or by thyroidectomy (surgical removal and subsequent pathological examination). As the cancer can uptake iodine, radioactive iodine is commonly used modality in thyroid carcinomas. However, it is followed by TSH suppression by Thyroxine therapy.