Research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine's 59th Annual Meeting reveals that patients with differentiated¹ thyroid（甲状腺） cancer live as long as people in perfect health, unless they are in the minority and have reached the most advanced stages of disease. Survival did not vary based on age, sex, or even if patients' cancer had reached the beginning of stage IV. "This highlights the excellent diagnostic and therapeutic² strategies available to patients with differentiated thyroid cancer," says Alexis Vrachimis, M.D., lead investigator³ for the department of nuclear medicine at University Hospital Muenster, Germany. "The excellent survival rates of almost all of our patients are predominantly due to the multidisciplinary（有关各种学问的） optimization⁴ of their diagnostic and therapeutic management, including advanced molecular⁵ imaging techniques, highly sensitive laboratory assays⁶, excellent endocrine（内分泌） surgery, individualized high-dose radioiodine therapy and lifelong medical surveillance."

The thyroid is an endocrine gland⁷ that produces thyroid hormones⁸, which increase rates of cellular⁹ metabolism¹⁰ and protein synthesis as well as activity in the sympathetic nervous system that controls the fight-or-flight response. The U.S. National Cancer Institute estimates that 56,460 Americans will be diagnosed and 1,780 people expected to die of thyroid cancer in 2012. There are different classifications for thyroid cancer, but most cases are considered differentiated, a term given to two forms called papillary and follicular thyroid cancer. There are four stages of the disease increasing from stages I through IV. The last stage includes subtypes a, b and c, however, stage IVb is extremely rare, and as such, no patients with this subtype were included in the study.

Investigators¹¹ analyzed¹² 1,502 consecutive¹³ patients with differentiated thyroid cancer who had been treated with radioiodine（放射碘） therapy. Only those patients with stage IVc differentiated thyroid cancer were found to have lower chance of survival than the normal population. This evidence should allay¹⁴ the fears of patients diagnosed with the disease.

"With these survival rates, patients with differentiated thyroid cancer in stages I-IVa could even be considered healthy patients," says Vrachimis.