This transcript was extracted from the ‘An overview of thyroid cancer‘ video.

Good morning everyone, and thank you once again for being here. So today I want to talk about something.

Today I’m going to talk about something small but really important. And that is thyroid gland and how quietly it can really develop into a cancer. Not all cancers are making noise. Some are surprisingly easy to miss, and sometimes the people who miss them feel completely well. But at the same time, it does not mean they are invisible. So as an ENT doctor, I regularly see patients with neck lumps.

Most are harmless, but some are not. Let me tell you a story of a patient and she came to my clinic for something else, but towards the end of consultation she casually mentioned about her neck lump. She said probably it’s nothing. She was not worried. She felt well. Life was busy and lump just became the part of the background, until it was not. Few weeks later unfortunately, I had to tell her it was thyroid cancer.

We will come to her story later again. So what do you think why people ignore symptoms?

Let me answer you this. People ignore symptoms not because they are careless, but because life is busy. Kids, jobs, responsibilities and especially if something does not hurt, it’s so easy to just push it back. Most people think serious illness comes with nasty features, but that’s not always the case and sometimes the most difficult part of the disease is how well you feel with it.

So let’s go through some basics before we go forward.

So what is thyroid gland? We all hear it’s so routinely thyroid, thyroid, thyroid and it’s a very small gland. Many people describe it in different way, I call it a butterfly-shaped gland, which is just in front of your neck. And though it’s small but it does a lot of many works. It controls metabolism, energy and many other functions of the body.

And what is thyroid cancer? It is, it is abnormal growth of cells like any other cancer in the body, but it grows often slowly and may not cause symptoms early. These cancers usually do not cause pain and that’s why they are so easy to ignore and the most challenging part of thyroid cancer is not how aggressive it is, but how easy it is to ignore.

They do not hurt, they do not shout but they whisper. So for the awareness point of view, the symptoms which you all should be looking for are neck lumps and bumps, change in voice or hoarseness, difficulty to swallow and persistent discomfort. Now you might be wondering why does that actually matters? So the reason I am talking about this today is simple.

This is something which can sit quietly in any one of us in this room and to be totally missed and that’s why exactly why it matters. But at the same time, I don’t want anyone to leave this room worrying about each and every small symptom. But if you notice something that persist, especially a lump that does not go away, change in voice that does not improve for a couple of weeks, that is the time to get it checked. And believe me, you are not wasting anyone’s time, that is exactly why the GP is there for. So many people ask what happens when they get referral from GP to us. So when they come to ENT clinic we perform thorough examination, we arrange an ultrasound scan mostly, sometimes a CT scan and sometimes we need to take a biopsy.

Biopsy is taking a small amount of tissue from your gland through a needle and sending it for analysis, and depending on the results then we proceed with the treatment plans. And especially important is all these cases are discussed in multidisciplinary meeting, so patients are not facing it alone.

And let me ask you all something, have you ever checked your neck? I have checked definitely. Most people have not and do you know if you look into the mirror tonight, would you know what to look for? So checking your neck is very simple. Take a glass of water, take a sip and swallow and look in front of the mirror at your neck.

Most of thyroid lumps move when you swallow, but then again, it might be making your question whether we should be checking on like regularly? So answer to that is we do not want you to check obsessively, but be generally aware of your neck, especially noticing anything new or changing is what it is about, awareness and not anxiety. Awareness is important because when we pick up on thyroid cancer early, the treatments are generally very effective and most of the patients, they go on living their life totally normal.

So that’s why noticing small changes matters and that’s why awareness matters. So how we treat thyroid gland cancers, usually the main treatment is surgery and sometimes we couple it with other modalities of treatment such as radioactive iodine or use of long term tablets.

Some misconceptions which are very common among the patients which we usually hear, one of them is serious illness should come with dramatic symptoms, that is not always the case. Or if something does not hurt, it cannot be serious but that is again not true. And another misconception which I usually hear and I personally don’t like to hear that from the patients, when the patient says we did not want to bother GP. So believe me, GPs are there for you, we are there for you, so please don’t ever think in that way. Some of the risk factors which do increase the risk, but always remember thyroid cancer can affect anyone.

So these risk factors include your family history. So in family history doesn’t mean that we go to your extended family and dig into their histories, it’s mainly the first degree relatives or to some extent second degree relatives. The radiation exposure and being female present more risk of developing thyroid cancer than males. So coming back to that patient which I mentioned to you, she went very well and returned back to her normal life but what stayed with me was what she said afterwards, “I nearly ignored it”.

So that’s where awareness matters. So my key message for today is simple do not ignore small changes in your body. Our body often gives early signals, and listening early makes a difference. And so it isn’t a talk about the cancer but it’s about noticing and sometimes the smallest things are the one that matters the most. And so tonight or tomorrow, 30 seconds, stand in front of the mirror and check your neck.

Because your body whispers long before it ever need to scream. Thank you very much, everyone.