More people were diagnosed with thyroid cancer between 1999 and 2008, and most of that increase came from ultrasounds finding tiny, harmless lumps in the thyroid—so it’s not that more people got sick, but that we’re just finding tiny things we wouldn’t have noticed before.

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.

In South Korea, more people were getting their thyroids checked with scans between 1999 and 2008, and as a result, way more thyroid cancers were found—way more than would’ve been found just by doctors noticing symptoms. This suggests the rise in diagnoses is mostly because of all the extra screening, not because more people were actually getting sick.

In South Korea, more and more people started finding thyroid cancer through routine scans between 1999 and 2008 — and this happened right after doctors began using ultrasound machines much more often thanks to new health rules.

Getting everyone screened for thyroid cancer finds a lot of harmless lumps that would never hurt you, so more people are told they have cancer—but it doesn’t save any lives.

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.