 Hi, I am Dr. Raj Shekhar C. Jaka, consultant surgical oncologist and robotic surgeon, Manipal Hospital, Whitefield. Today, I will be telling you something about thyroid cancer. Fortunately, thyroid cancer is one of the curable cancers. There are four varieties of thyroid cancer. One is papillary carcinoma and the second one is follicular carcinoma. These two are very common cancers and majority of the times they are curable. The third one is medullary thyroid carcinoma and the fourth one is anaplastic carcinoma. Medullary, if treated early, yes, it is also curable. But if it is late, means if there is a spread, then the cure becomes difficult. Anaplastic carcinoma is a very aggressive cancer. So majority of the times it is not curable. But fortunately, majority of the people come with papillary or follicular carcinoma which are curable. And here, we don't have treatments which are having complications like we don't have chemotherapy, we don't have radiotherapy. It is only surgery followed by radioactive iodine treatment. So the primary treatment of thyroid cancer is surgery. I always say the first treatment is the best treatment. So first time surgery is the best chance to get cured. So a proper surgery where we remove entire thyroid gland and if at all there are enlarged lymph nodes or probable risk lymph nodes, we remove those lymph nodes. We say neck dissection. Either it is central compartment neck dissection or sometimes if there is a spread to the lateral neck, then we do lateral neck dissection. So we remove complete disease from the neck and then over a period of three weeks we wait. And if at all we find that the pathology report says it is little advanced, in that case we ask you to get a radioactive iodine treatment. This is also very simple treatment which is just a tablet to be taken. So after this, you will be put on one tablet which is a replacement of thyroid hormone and also it will act as a suppressor to the redevelopment of a cancer. So in that way, hardly you are taking any other medication which really causes any complications or side effects. This thyroid hormone is as natural as possible. We usually don't do PET CT scan like any other cancer. Here we do radioactive iodine scan after the surgery. So the scan will not be done before surgery. The scan will be done after the surgery to know whether there is any residual disease in the body and that will be removed by or killed by the radioactive iodine treatment. It is more common in females. So I would urge any male or female who sees a swelling in the throat that is in front of the throat here. This is the right place where thyroid gland can get enlarged. So if it is enlarged, please come to a doctor, the qualified surgical oncologist and get it checked. Any thyroid swelling is not always cancerous. Majority of the times it can be non-cancerous and some of the patients I have heard saying that they have done a blood test, thyroid was normal. Thyroid was normal doesn't say that structure of the thyroid was normal. It is the function of the thyroid which will be evaluated through the blood test. The cancer will not be shown in the blood test. Blood test can only tell whether thyroid function is normal or not. And in cancer, majority of the times function will be normal. In spite of that, there can be cancer. So that is why blood test is totally different, thyroid function test is totally different and an ultrasound scan and an FNAC, fine needle aspiration cytology. These are the two things will conclusively tell us whether it is a cancerous or not and guide us further to treat you better. We have a fantastic infrastructure in Manipal Hospital Whitefield here to treat for this thyroid cancer and we have the most modern technology that is a robotic surgery. Whenever it is feasible to operate through robot, we will be using that Da Vinthi robot and we will be operating. Basically this robot is used for a people who doesn't want a scar over here. So from the axilla or some other approach, we go into the neck and dissect it so that there is a scarless, we say scarless surgery or scarless neck. It is basically for the cosmetic reason. So from the high end technology to the basic technology, we have everything at Manipal Hospital Whitefield to take care of you.