MONDAY, June 11 (HealthDay News) -- Most people with thyroid
cancer live as long as people who don't have the disease, a new
study finds. Patients with advanced thyroid cancer are the
exception. German researchers analyzed data from 1,502 patients
with differentiated thyroid cancer (which includes two types of
thyroid cancer, follicular and papillary) had been treated with
radioiodine therapy. Only patients with advanced disease (stage
4-c) had a lower chance of long-term survival than the general
population. Survival did not vary based on age or sex, or even
if a patient's cancer had reached the beginning of stage 4. The
study was scheduled for Monday presentation at the Society of
Nuclear Medicine annual meeting in Miami Beach, Fla. "With these
survival rates, patients with differentiated thyroid cancer in
stages 1 to 4-a could even be considered healthy patients," lead
investigator Dr. Alexis Vrachimis, at the department of nuclear
medicine, University Hospital Muenster, said in a society news
release. The