Common thyroid cancer is no longer cancer
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A group of 24 doctors from seven countries just reclassified a certain type of thyroid tumor as no longer cancerous, according to a report in JAMA Oncology.
That might not seem like that big of a big deal, but it is. The tumor—formerly called EFVPTC (encapsulated follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma) but now known as NIFTP (noninvasive follicular thyroid neoplasm with papillary-like nuclear features), with no C on the end to designate "carcinoma"—is estimated to make up between 10% and 20% of all thyroid cancer diagnoses in Northern America and Europe, according to a press release.
The New York Times reports around 10,000 people are diagnosed with it in the US annually. All those people were diagnosed with cancer, which is terrifying psychologically for a patient, and also leads to aggressive, risky—and now officially unnecessary—treatments, such as the removal of the thyroid and radioactive iodine treatments.
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Before making the reclassification, the international team of doctors observed more than 200 NIFTP patients for up to 26 years. They determined their tumors "have a very low risk of adverse outcome." NIFTP tumors have a nucleus that looks like cancer, but those cells aren't able to get out of the fibrous tissue that encapsulates them.
"If it’s not a cancer, let’s not call it a cancer," the president-elect of the American Thyroid Association tells the Times. Similar efforts to reclassify certain lung, prostate, and breast lesions to avoid over-diagnosing cancer are being called for.
"To my knowledge, this is the first time in the modern era a type of cancer is being reclassified as a non-cancer," senior investigator Dr. Yuri Nikiforov says in the press release.
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"I hope that it will set an example." (This woman says a potato chip led to her cancer diagnosis.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Common Thyroid Cancer Isn't Cancer Anymore
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