But the thing is, the most common form of Thyroid cancer, papillary thyroid carcinoma has an extremely high survival rate and an extremely high prevalence, and in most cases will not be clinically noticable, unless you perform thyroidectomies and actively go looking for it.
In Korea they actively went looking for such cancers and then did thyroidectomies, however this ended up doing more harm then good as the people with these cancers were clinically fine and unlikely to experience death from it (you'll die of natural causes before it progresses), but now required external thyroid hormone because they had no glands.
DonCheadleThree t1_j1z9zua wrote
Reply to TIL that one of the few positive health effects of smoking is a drastic reduction of a person's risk of thyroid cancer. According to a Korean study of the health records of over 10M people, smokers have a 36% lower risk of thyroid cancer. Smoking and heavy drinking reduces one's risk even more. by EncyclopediaJake
But the thing is, the most common form of Thyroid cancer, papillary thyroid carcinoma has an extremely high survival rate and an extremely high prevalence, and in most cases will not be clinically noticable, unless you perform thyroidectomies and actively go looking for it.
In Korea they actively went looking for such cancers and then did thyroidectomies, however this ended up doing more harm then good as the people with these cancers were clinically fine and unlikely to experience death from it (you'll die of natural causes before it progresses), but now required external thyroid hormone because they had no glands.