Thyroid tumor is a common disease, divided into benign and malignant tumors, accounting for more than 90% of endocrine system tumors. According to American data, 4%-7% of adults are found to have thyroid nodules during physical examination. It is highly prevalent in many areas of China, and the high incidence of thyroid tumor in Dongming County of Shandong Province just in the past 2009 has caused the high attention of Shandong Provincial Party Committee, Provincial Government and the State Council, leading to a series of in-depth investigations and extensive discussions in the society by relevant departments, and even panic at one time. With rich experience in the treatment of thyroid tumor, the Cancer Hospital now makes a brief explanation on the problems related to thyroid tumor. 1.What are the causes of thyroid tumor? With the continuous development of science, people’s knowledge about the causes of thyroid tumor has gradually increased, but it is still not clear yet. The atomic bombing in Hiroshima, Japan in 1945 and the Chernobyl nuclear explosion in the former Soviet Union in 1986 both caused a significant increase in the number of thyroid cancer patients in the surrounding children in the following years, and the incidence of thyroid cancer in the region has remained high for a long time since then. Iodine and thyroid cancer have a special “U” pattern, i.e., both iodine deficiency and high iodine can cause an increased incidence of thyroid cancer, and high iodine may increase the incidence of papillary thyroid cancer. In addition, the chronic stimulation of thyroid stimulating hormone is also a possible causative factor for the development of thyroid cancer, which is the reason why oral thyroxine tablets are clinically used to prevent the recurrence of thyroid cancer. 2. What are the clinical characteristics of thyroid adenoma? A large proportion of patients with thyroid cancer do not feel anything, but by chance they are found to have swollen neck by others, or they find their neck thick when they look at themselves in the mirror. With the improvement of people’s health awareness, voluntary health checkups are becoming more and more frequent, and some patients are found during checkups. The main manifestation is a lump in the front of the neck, which grows slowly and has a choking sensation when eating. One or more nodules are found in the thyroid gland during ultrasound examination. 3.What is the significance of ultrasound examination in the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid tumor? Ultrasound examination is simple, cheap, fast and non-invasive. It is the most common medical equipment in domestic hospitals nowadays and almost all rural hospitals have it. Ultrasound is superior to CT scan in diagnosing thyroid tumor, mainly because ultrasound can detect small thyroid tumor but CT scan cannot. Therefore, ultrasound plays an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid cancer. An experienced ultrasound physician can detect lesions as large as 0.3 cm in size. 4.Do all thyroid tumors need treatment? Thyroid tumors are so common, but not all thyroid lumps require immediate treatment. If the lump is more than 2 cm, if the pressure on the trachea causes breath-holding, if the pressure on the esophagus causes swallowing obstruction, if the pressure on the nerve causes mute voice, if the lump is calcified on ultrasound, or if there are other signs of suspected malignancy, treatment should be given as soon as possible. If the mass is smaller than 1 cm, the patient does not feel uncomfortable, there is no calcification on ultrasound examination, or the lesion is clinically considered benign, it can be observed and ultrasound examination can be done once every six months. 5.What kind of treatment do patients with thyroid tumors need? Both benign thyroid tumor patients and thyroid cancer patients need surgery. This is because: (1) It is often difficult to confirm the diagnosis of thyroid tumor patients before surgery. Although there are many advanced examination methods, including ultrasound, CT scan, nuclear scan and fine needle aspiration, it is difficult to accurately determine the nature of the lesion, and the cellular and pathological diagnosis results of fine needle aspiration are easily affected by various aspects. (2) Surgery is the primary and most effective treatment for benign and malignant thyroid tumors. Surgical treatment is recognized as the first choice for treating thyroid cancer, and the appropriate scope of treatment is the key to success or failure of treatment. In other words, if treatment is needed, thyroid tumors first require standardized surgical treatment, which is sure to be effective and lays the foundation for later non-surgical treatment. The majority of patients will be fine with oral thyroxine after standardized surgical treatment. Only very few patients need radiotherapy, nuclear iodine treatment, etc. according to specific conditions. 6.There are so many patients with thyroid cancer, how is the treatment effect of thyroid cancer? What are the advantages of cancer hospitals in treating thyroid cancer? Most of the thyroid cancers have good treatment effect, and it can be said that thyroid cancer is a “curable” disease at present, among which the 10-year survival rate of papillary cancer is over 90%. Shandong Cancer Hospital, as the only tertiary level A specialized hospital for the treatment of tumors in the province, has accumulated rich experience in the treatment of thyroid tumors. It is the purpose of the Cancer Hospital to design the diagnosis and treatment plan together with the tumor patients as the center and all departments. At present, about 50% of the thyroid cancer cases admitted to our hospital have undergone irregular surgical treatment or radiotherapy in other hospitals, and mute patients are common after surgery. Among the specimens of thyroid residual lobe resected in our hospital, a higher number of patients are found to have cancer residue, and the scope of lymph node dissection in the neck is not standardized, and some patients take the inappropriate way of multiple or multiple lymph node removal. It is wrong to give inappropriate radiotherapy or chemotherapy to differentiated thyroid cancer that can be completely removed by surgery and has not yet developed distant metastases. Unfortunately, radiotherapy is often given to young patients with papillary or follicular thyroid cancer even in many large hospitals.