Diagnosing Thyroid Cancer

Although thyroid cancer is essentially symptomless, if you see or feel any lumps in the neck area or experience prolonged hoarseness, don’t put off seeking an appointment with an endocrinologist or thyroidologist. Once you’ve seen the specialist, the process of diagnosis might involve a number of tests, including a thyroid ultrasound, blood tests, fine needle aspiration biopsy, nodule biopsy, a radioactive iodine uptake (RAI-U) nuclear scan, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

An RAI-U nuclear scan is usually performed before any biopsy and involves taking a small amount of radioactive iodine to scan the body for “cold” spots. Nodules that absorb less substance than the thyroid tissue around them are called cold nodules and may be cancerous.) Although routine thyroid blood tests (checking for abnormal levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone [TSH] in the blood) do not result in an abnormal reading for all thyroid cancer—such as papillary—in some cases blood work can indicate the possibility of another type of thyroid cancer: medullary. If the doctor suspects medullary cancer, additional blood work will check for high levels of calcitonin, which is unique to all the thyroid cancers that can occur.

Reference: What You Need to Know About Thyroid Cancer. National Cancer Institute Web site. Available at: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/wyntk/thyroid. Accessed September 30, 2008.