In South Korea, doctors started finding much smaller thyroid lumps between 1999 and 2008—even though these lumps were too tiny to feel or cause any problems. This suggests they’re being found by accident during scans or tests done for other reasons.

In South Korea, more people were diagnosed with tiny thyroid lumps between 1999 and 2008—not because more people got sick, but because doctors started scanning for them more often with fancy tests.

In South Korea, between 1999 and 2008, doctors started finding a lot more tiny thyroid cancers—so many that the overall number jumped more than six times. But almost all of these were very small tumors that probably wouldn’t have caused any harm if left alone.

In South Korea, most of the rise in thyroid cancer diagnoses between 1999 and 2008 was from tiny tumors that almost never kill people — doctors were just finding them more often, not because more people were getting deadly cancer.

In South Korea, more people were diagnosed with thyroid cancer between 1993 and 2011—not because more people were getting sick, but because doctors started using ultrasound scans to check everyone’s necks, even if they felt fine, and found lots of tiny, harmless tumors that would never have caused problems.

More thyroid cancers were found between 1999 and 2008, but almost all of them were tiny lumps that doctors couldn’t even feel during a regular checkup — so they probably found them by accident while doing scans or tests for other reasons.