Once your doctors know the type of your cancer, they will decide which treatment will work best for your type of cancer, and any other health issues you may have.

You will be encouraged to help make the final treatment choices.

As cancer patients often have a combination of treatments, your treatment may include:

• surgery
• radiation therapy
• chemotherapy

Your doctor may have suspected thyroid cancer after talking with you about your health and completing a physical examination. A normal thyroid generally cannot be seen or felt, but you may have noticed a lump on your neck. A number of special tests are usually necessary to confirm a thyroid cancer diagnosis. They include:

Imaging studies

X-rays, ultrasound, CT (computerized axial tomography) scans, MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) and bone scans allow organs, tissues and bones to be examined in more detail. They may be uncomfortable but are usually painless.

An ultrasound is the most common imaging study to diagnose thyroid cancer.

Biopsy

A biopsy is usually necessary to make a definite diagnosis of cancer. Cells or tissues are removed from the body and checked under a microscope. If the cells are cancerous, they may be studied further to see how fast they are growing.

There are many ways to do a biopsy. To diagnose thyroid cancer, your doctor may take some thyroid tissue with a small needle (fine-needle aspiration).

There is no single cause of thyroid cancer. The factors that appear to increase the risk of developing it are:

• age – particularly between 25 and 65
• gender – more women develop thyroid cancer
• family history – particularly with medullary carcinoma
• radiation to the head and neck during childhood (particularly before 1960, when much higher doses of radiation were used to treat non-cancerous conditions such as acne or swollen tonsils)
• too much or too little iodine in the diet

Some people develop thyroid cancer without any of these risk factors.

Thyroid cancer starts in the cells of the thyroid gland. This butterfly-shaped gland is located in the lower part of the neck, just in front of the Adam’s apple cartilage. It has 2 lobes, connected by some tissue called the isthmus. The thyroid produces thyroxine (an iodine-containing hormone that regulates the body’s metabolism) and calcitonin (a hormone that regulates calcium levels). The pituitary gland controls the function of the thyroid through another hormone called thyroid stimulating hormone