Diagnosing and Treating Thyroid Cancer in Lexington, KY

Diagnosing and Treating Thyroid Cancer in Lexington, KY Health Talk Transcript:

Lawrence Shirley, MD, Surgical Oncology
Baptist Health Lexington

Lawrence Shirley, MD:

The thyroid gland is a gland in your neck. It helps metabolism in your body; it helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle. It helps regulate digestion, mental status, everything like that. It’s a very essential gland in your body. Thyroid nodules are very common. Most thyroid nodules are not cancerous, and by most, I mean 80% to 90%, but we have to find those 10% to 20% because those need to be treated.

The best way to do that is using a small-gauge needle to collect cells from those nodules. Those cells are then sent to the pathologist. If it comes back as suspicious for cancer, then we have to treat it as such. Sometimes they can come back as indeterminate.

Over the past five to 10 years, we've developed new strategies. There's a special genetic test that we can send off for, and those genetic tests help us know if indeterminate nodules are benign or suspicious and help guide us further. Thyroid cancer is a very treatable cancer. The most common treatment patients may need after surgery is radioactive iodine. This is a one-time pill that contains radioactive iodine. Iodine is only taken up in structures that look like the thyroid. It will take up the radioactive iodine, which will then kill the cells.

We're fortunate that, at our facility at Baptist Health Lexington, we have the experts available to treat this, and patients can have their cancer treated and removed and live the rest of their lives cancer-free.