Why most people have tiny thyroid cancers without knowing it
Prevalence of Subclinical Papillary Thyroid Cancer by Age: Meta-analysis of Autopsy Studies.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Subclinical PTC prevalence is stable across all age groups, from young adults to the elderly.
Most people assume cancer risk increases with age, but here, the hidden cancer rate is nearly identical in 20-year-olds and 80-year-olds.
Practical Takeaways
If you're considering a thyroid scan, ask your doctor: 'Is this based on symptoms, or just routine screening?'
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Subclinical PTC prevalence is stable across all age groups, from young adults to the elderly.
Most people assume cancer risk increases with age, but here, the hidden cancer rate is nearly identical in 20-year-olds and 80-year-olds.
Practical Takeaways
If you're considering a thyroid scan, ask your doctor: 'Is this based on symptoms, or just routine screening?'
Publication
Journal
The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism
Year
2022
Authors
Natalia Arroyo, K. Bell, Vivian Hsiao, Sara Fernandes-Taylor, O. Alagoz, Yichi Zhang, L. Davies, D. Francis
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Claims (5)
Some cancers found during routine screening might never hurt you — they grow so slowly that you’d die of something else before they ever became a problem.
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.
When doctors examine entire thyroid glands after death, they find thyroid cancer more often than when they only check part of the gland — so how they look at the gland changes how common the cancer seems to be.
Even as people get older—from their 20s to their 80s and beyond—the number of people who have tiny, undetected thyroid cancer stays about the same, hovering between 11.5% and 13.4%.
Men and women are equally likely to have small, undetected thyroid cancer that doesn’t cause symptoms, no matter how old they are.