Recently, many patients have come to the hospital with thyroid nodules detected during physical examinations, and the number of patients with thyroid nodules has been increasing year by year in clinical practice. It has been documented that the incidence of thyroid nodules is 5% in women and 1% in men. When screening the immediate population with high-resolution ultrasound, the detection rate of thyroid nodules is 19-67%. As the incidence of thyroid nodules increases, the incidence of thyroid cancer also increases significantly, with the incidence of thyroid cancer in thyroid nodules ranging from 5-15%. In the literature, the incidence of thyroid cancer in the United States has increased from 3.6 cases per 100,000 people in 1973 to 8.7 cases per 100,000 people in 2002 and is still increasing in recent years. Some scholars suggest that this phenomenon may be due to improved screening and detection tools that can detect patients at an early stage (e.g., ultrasound for early diagnosis of small nodules). However, recent reports indicate that the incidence of thyroid cancer is indeed increasing and is not solely attributable to improved early screening and detection. The vast majority of thyroid nodules are benign, with only a very small percentage of cystic nodules and some solid nodules being thyroid cancer. Most of the thyroid cancers are well-differentiated and less malignant tumors, which are also called differentiated thyroid cancers. Differentiated thyroid cancer is usually a single solid nodule that grows relatively slowly and does not cause significant discomfort to the patient. Patients with differentiated thyroid cancer have a longer survival period than other malignant tumors, generally more than 10 years after surgical removal of the tumor and no obvious metastases are found. Differentiated thyroid cancer is difficult to distinguish benign from malignant preoperatively, and the final result relies on pathological examination. At present, the commonly used diagnostic methods include thyroid ultrasound, radionuclide pro-tumor imaging and thyroid aspiration, and the internationally accepted differentiation method is thyroid fine needle aspiration pathology. Ultrasound diagnoses thyroid cancer with the following signs: gravelly calcifications; hypoechoic nodules; abundant blood supply; irregular nodule borders and surrounding infiltration; and anterior-posterior diameter larger than the left-right diameter in cross-section. If there are three or more of these signs, thyroid cancer should be highly suspected, especially if there are gravel-like calcifications. Radionuclide pro-tumor imaging of thyroid cancer often shows “cold nodules” on static thyroid imaging, and after injection of pro-tumor imaging drugs, the “cold nodules” appear to be obviously filled. This suggests that the tumor cells are actively proliferating and are suspected to be malignant. In the clinic, there are many patients with ultrasound reports from medical examinations asking whether a nodule of a few millimeters in diameter needs to be treated. The American Thyroid Association’s “Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid nodules and differentiated thyroid cancer” released in 2009 suggests that nodules with a diameter of more than 1 cm need to be surgically removed; there is no unified standard in China, and most doctors in hospitals believe that nodules with a diameter of more than 1.5-2 cm need to be surgically removed. Surgery is currently the best treatment for thyroid nodules. Some patients take levothyroxine to inhibit the growth of nodules when the size of the nodules is small. Levothyroxine indirectly inhibits tumor growth by suppressing the secretion of thyroid stimulating hormone by the pituitary gland, but it is not effective in areas with adequate dietary iodine. The internationally accepted radical treatment for differentiated thyroid cancer is total thyroidectomy (near total excision) + 131I removal of residual thyroid gland + thyroxine suppression therapy. 131I removal of residual thyroid gland is an important part of the treatment, which is required for patients with differentiated thyroid cancer over 2 cm in diameter, cervical lymph node metastasis or distant metastasis. The radical regimen has proven to be beneficial to patients, and the literature reports that the overall actual 20-year survival of a group of patients treated with total thyroidectomy and 131I was 65%.