WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt., May 10 (UPI) -- Although U.S. thyroid cancer has more than doubled in the past 30 years, a study says the rise is attributed to improved diagnostic techniques.
Some thyroid cancers can spread and cause death; thyroid cancer has also been recognized to exist in a subclinical -- before symptoms -- form. Autopsy studies have revealed that many individuals not known to have thyroid cancer during their lifetime had thyroid cancer, particularly papillary cancers.
As diagnostic techniques for thyroid cancer have become more sensitive, such as with the advent of ultrasound and fine-needle aspiration, it has become possible to detect this subclinical disease.
Drs. Louise Davies and H. Gilbert Welch of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt., found the incidence of thyroid cancer rose from 3.6 per 100,000 in 1973 to 8.7 per 100,000 in 2002 -- a 2.4-fold increase.
This 5.1 per 100,000 growth in the incidence of thyroid cancer was virtually entirely due to an increase in papillary thyroid cancer, which rose by 5 per 100,000, a 2.9-fold increase, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
