In a bold but positive step, a recent study has downgraded a certain type of cancer so that it is no longer considered to be a cancer.
Whilst this might sound a bit odd, it's actually remarkably sensible.
It has been known that certain types of thyroid cancer behave in a much less aggressive way than others. At the least aggressive end of the spectrum some thyroid tumours hardly ever do anything nasty, like spread beyond the thyroid to cause trouble elsewhere.
A large group of mainly thyroid cancer pathologists managed to conduct a pretty conclusive study looking at one of these least aggressive types of thyroid tumour (with the catchy name of Non-invasive Encapsulated Follicular Variant of Papillary Thyroid Cancer), and showed that although the individual cells might look a bit like cancerous cells down the microscope, that they didn't behave in a cancerous way. The study found that 0 of the 109 cases of this tumour had an adverse outcome such as distant spread of the disease.
Safe in the knowledge of how relatively well-behaved these tumour cells are, the authors proposed to re-name it NIFTP (Non-invasive Follicular Thyroid neoplasm with Papillary-like nuclear features). The observant among you will notice that the C word has been removed from its name, as it is now no-longer to be considered as a cancer. This means it no longer merits being treated like a cancer, so avoiding the need for further surgery or radioiodine or the extended and anxiety-provoking folllow-up, and the C-word doesn't need to appear on health insurance applications, etc, etc.
I think a big 'well-done' should go to the authors of the study - by their good work they have likely saved a huge amount of worry, expense and unneccessary medical interventions, to an estimated 45,000 patients world-wide each year.
Whilst this might sound a bit odd, it's actually remarkably sensible.
It has been known that certain types of thyroid cancer behave in a much less aggressive way than others. At the least aggressive end of the spectrum some thyroid tumours hardly ever do anything nasty, like spread beyond the thyroid to cause trouble elsewhere.
A large group of mainly thyroid cancer pathologists managed to conduct a pretty conclusive study looking at one of these least aggressive types of thyroid tumour (with the catchy name of Non-invasive Encapsulated Follicular Variant of Papillary Thyroid Cancer), and showed that although the individual cells might look a bit like cancerous cells down the microscope, that they didn't behave in a cancerous way. The study found that 0 of the 109 cases of this tumour had an adverse outcome such as distant spread of the disease.
Safe in the knowledge of how relatively well-behaved these tumour cells are, the authors proposed to re-name it NIFTP (Non-invasive Follicular Thyroid neoplasm with Papillary-like nuclear features). The observant among you will notice that the C word has been removed from its name, as it is now no-longer to be considered as a cancer. This means it no longer merits being treated like a cancer, so avoiding the need for further surgery or radioiodine or the extended and anxiety-provoking folllow-up, and the C-word doesn't need to appear on health insurance applications, etc, etc.
I think a big 'well-done' should go to the authors of the study - by their good work they have likely saved a huge amount of worry, expense and unneccessary medical interventions, to an estimated 45,000 patients world-wide each year.
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