By RYAN BRADLEY MAY 12, 2016
For decades, science has classified cancers by the organ or system in which they begin. That taxonomy is slowly being replaced — but it’s still the indispensable way to understand the odds.
THYROID
Cases: 64,300 • Deaths: 1,980 • Survival: 98%
Thyroid cancers are among the most treatable cancers. In some cases, they’re diagnosed after a lump in the neck is found; in others, when a patient feels tightness in the throat or hoarseness or has a hard time breathing or swallowing. Only about 5 percent of thyroid cancers grow aggressively and present a risk of spreading to other organs.
Many thyroid tumors are so slow-growing that earlier this year, an international panel of pathologists decided that a whole category of thyroid tumors (about one-sixth of the 64,300 cases cited above) would no longer be considered cancer.
Most thyroid cancers do not respond well to chemotherapy, but some newer targeted drugs show incredible promise. One class, known as kinase inhibitors, helps block certain enzymes common to thyroid cancer, and also blocks the growth of blood vessels. (Cancer tumors often survive by getting the body to form new blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis.)
Differentiated: Nearly 90 percent of thyroid cancer cases involve differentiated thyroid cancers (D.T.C.), in which the cancer mutation doesn’t look all that different from a typical thyroid cell. But D.T.C. is itself divided into four groups. A variant of one of them, papillary thyroid cancer, is the kind that was downgraded this year. It is more common in women and younger people and is fairly treatable.
Medullary thyroid: This sometimes comes from having an inherited abnormality in a specific gene called RET. Patients with the abnormal RET gene that causes medullary thyroid cancer often have their thyroid removed as a preventive step.
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