Thyroid cancer

Thyroid cancer can be cured if it is caught early and treated promptly. Our experienced endocrine surgeons, head and neck (ENT) surgeons, and thyroid cancer specialists are experts in differentiating between benign thyroid nodules and thyroid cancers, including papillary, follicular, Hurthle cell, medullary or anaplastic types. We use the latest medical advances, and minimal access surgical techniques to ensure your thyroid cancer is treated quickly and effectively.

Choose Duke for your thyroid cancer treatment because we offer:

• Nationally ranked cancer program. We are consistently ranked among the best cancer programs in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. In addition, as a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, our thyroid cancer team is recognized for exploring new treatment opportunities through ongoing clinical trials. We offer you the latest research discoveries before they are available elsewhere.
• A team approach. Your team may include board-certified surgeons and endocrinologists as well as medical and radiation oncologists, nuclear medicine specialists, cytopathologists, nutritionists and integrative medicine specialists. We've made it possible for you to see your team, and undergo appropriate testing on one convenient day. Studies across the world demonstrate that receiving medical care from an organized team of multiple specialists results in better outcomes. Our specialists meet weekly to discuss patients, develop optimal care plans, and offer advanced surgical, medical and follow up care.
• Surgical experience and expertise. Our surgeons have performed thousands of thyroid-specific successful surgical procedures, ranging from minimally invasive to complex procedures. We strive to ensure our patients experience lower complication rates, shorter hospital stays, lower overall costs, less likelihood of cancer recurrence, and fewer repeat operations as compared to national published data.
• Personalized therapies. We offer personalized therapies based on thyroid biopsies or small tissue samples, which means your treatments are tailored to your specific type of cancer.
• Latest medical advances. We are authorized to offer patients the latest medical advances including vandetanib (Caprelsa), cabozantinib (Cometriq) and sorafenib (Nexavar).
• Clinical trial access. We are one of the world’s first medical centers to enroll patients in clinical studies investigating small-molecule therapies for extensive and metastatic thyroid cancer. Our expanding portfolio of clinical trials and growing tissue bank opens our patients’ access to experimental uses of approved drugs and newer therapies, including selumetinib.
• Latest national practice standards. We work with the American Thyroid Association, the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons and the National Comprehensive Center Network (NCCN) to help set the national standards for best practice treatment guidelines. We were also one of the first institutions to work with the Collaborative Endocrine Surgery Quality Improvement Program to improve quality in endocrine surgery.
• Support to you and your family. Our comprehensive support services range from helping patients minimize the side effects of cancer treatment to coping with the emotional and psychological effects of diagnosis and treatment. View all of our cancer support groups in our event calendar.