The Nodular Thyroid Gland and Cancer

The selection of patients with clinically nodular thyroid glands for operation to prevent or treat thyroid cancer is still a subject of dispute. Unlike most other tumors, thyroid cancer has an unusually broad spectrum of behavior. At one extreme is the well differentiated, slow-growing process that behaves in an almost benign manner. At the other extreme is the poorly differentiated, rapidly fatal anaplastic process. Knowledge of the broad zone between these two extremes is limited, and whether the "harmless" tumor at the benign end of the spectrum can progress with the passage of time to the malignant end is not . . .