Thyroid Cancer Recurrence

If you are a thyroid cancer survivor, it is not uncommon to have concerns about recurrence. As with all cancers, recurrence can happen after successful therapy for thyroid cancer, even if you’ve been disease-free for years. In fact, up to 30% of well-differentiated thyroid cancer patients experience a recurrence, two thirds of which occur within the first 10 years after therapy.

However, recurrences may take place decades after initial thyroid cancer therapy. As with initial diagnoses of well-differentiated thyroid cancer, the prognosis is improved if the recurrence is caught early, when the tumor is small and localized. These are both good reasons why it’s so important to keep up with routine checkups!

If you have a recurrence, it may either be local (in the thyroid area) or metastatic (somewhere else in your body).

Local recurrence

Your doctor may suspect a recurrence in the thyroid area, based on thyroglobulin (Tg) testing, a whole body scan (WBS), ultrasound and/or a biopsy. If a recurrence is confirmed, you may be treated with further surgery or with radioactive iodine (RAI) therapy.

Metastatic recurrence

If your cancer comes back outside the thyroid area, it is said to have “metastasized.” When thyroid cancer metastasizes, it may appear in the central nervous system, in the lymph nodes, in areas of the lungs or bones, or in the neck.

Even though the cancer has metastasized, the cancer cells are still thyroid cells. This means that, after testing to confirm the recurrence, metastasized thyroid cancer can sometimes be treated the way the primary cancer was — with surgery and/or RAI therapy.

After treating a recurrence, you’ll probably be monitored more frequently for the first few years after therapy.

Managing recurrent thyroid cancer

Recurrent thyroid cancer is often treated in much the same way as the original cancer. Your doctor’s recommended choice of treatment depends on the type of thyroid cancer you have, your previous treatment, and where the cancer comes back — whether it is localized or metastatic. To read more about common treatment options, please visit the Newly Diagnosed section of this site.