Loading
12 treatment settings, 4 with more than one named option. Each section lays out the options the standard of care names, what each is for, the trials behind them with their recorded results, the side effects and cautions on record, and questions to ask. Built from the cancer page's standard-of-care rows; nothing here is advice for your case.
Thyroidectomy ± radioactive iodine; TSH suppression.
A drug that finds tumour cells and carries a radioactive atom that irradiates them from inside the body.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Lenvatinib; selpercatinib (RET); BRAF/MEK (anaplastic).
Selpercatinib is a selective RET inhibitor approved for any tumour with a RET fusion, with a further label update in July 2026.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Ultrasound with TI-RADS; FNA only for nodules meeting size/appearance thresholds; Bethesda reporting; molecular classifier (Afirma, ThyroSeq) for indeterminate results.
Thyroid fine-needle aspiration takes a needle sample from a thyroid lump and grades it on a six-level scale; when the result is uncertain, a gene test on the same sample can often rule cancer out and avoid surgery.
Ultrasound uses sound waves to make live pictures; it is cheap, safe, and used to guide needles into lumps.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Active surveillance or lobectomy; total thyroidectomy and radioiodine not indicated.
Active surveillance watches papillary thyroid cancers of 1 cm or less with ultrasound every 6 to 12 months instead of operating, because about 90% stay stable over a decade and delayed surgery works as well when needed. It is not suitable for tumours next to the windpipe or the voice nerve, and uptake outside Japan and Korea is still low.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Lobectomy or total thyroidectomy; no radioiodine ablation (ESTIMABL2, IoN); modest TSH suppression then normal-range TSH.
This setting names no product or technology record yet; the approach above is the standard as written. Ask your team which specific treatments they mean.
Averages across everyone diagnosed, often years ago. A median is the middle of a group: half the people counted lived longer than the figure shown, and some lived far longer. Your stage, subtype, age, fitness and the treatment you receive matter more than the average, and the numbers are improving quickly.
Averages across everyone diagnosed, often years ago. A median is the middle of a group: half the people counted lived longer than the figure shown, and some lived far longer. Your stage, subtype, age, fitness and the treatment you receive matter more than the average, and the numbers are improving quickly.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Total thyroidectomy with therapeutic node dissection; radioiodine (1.1-3.7 GBq adjuvant; higher for known metastases) after recombinant TSH; TSH suppression.
The original targeted radiotherapy: thyroid cells soak up iodine, so radioactive iodine destroys leftover thyroid tissue and metastases while sparing everything else.
Using the thyroid's natural appetite for iodine to image and treat thyroid cancer with a radioactive form of it. The oldest theranostic, and now used more selectively than it was.
Ablation success 85.0% (1.1 GBq) vs 88.9% (3.7 GBq), non-inferior.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Genotype first: selpercatinib (RET fusion), larotrectinib/entrectinib (NTRK), dabrafenib-trametinib (BRAF V600E); otherwise lenvatinib (or sorafenib); consider MAPK-inhibitor redifferentiation to restore iodine uptake.
Selpercatinib is a selective RET inhibitor approved for any tumour with a RET fusion, with a further label update in July 2026.
PFS 18.3 vs 3.6 months; HR 0.21.
PFS 10.8 vs 5.8 months; HR 0.59.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Total thyroidectomy with central neck dissection; prophylactic thyroidectomy in RET germline carriers by codon-based age; calcitonin surveillance.
A test of the DNA you were born with, to find inherited risk genes such as BRCA or Lynch syndrome.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Selpercatinib first line (LIBRETTO-531); cabozantinib or vandetanib if RET-selective therapy unavailable or failed.
Selpercatinib is a selective RET inhibitor approved for any tumour with a RET fusion, with a further label update in July 2026.
Vandetanib was the first drug approved for medullary thyroid cancer (2011), now largely replaced by RET-selective selpercatinib.
PFS HR 0.28; 12-month PFS 86.8% vs 65.7%.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Rapid BRAF testing; dabrafenib-trametinib (ROAR), often with pembrolizumab, then surgery and radiation if rendered resectable.
Dabrafenib plus trametinib is the BRAF-plus-MEK pill combination, approved for BRAF V600E lung cancer and, since 2022, for any solid tumour with that mutation.
Averages across everyone diagnosed, often years ago. A median is the middle of a group: half the people counted lived longer than the figure shown, and some lived far longer. Your stage, subtype, age, fitness and the treatment you receive matter more than the average, and the numbers are improving quickly.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Multimodal chemoradiation (paclitaxel-based) if feasible; lenvatinib; immunotherapy for PD-L1-high or TMB-high; NTRK/RET/ALK agents if fusion-positive; early palliative care.
IMRT and IGRT shape the radiation beam to the tumour's outline from multiple angles and check the patient's position with a scan before every session, so surrounding organs receive less dose. Fewer, larger doses are now standard in breast and prostate cancer, but a low-dose bath still spreads across normal tissue.
Pembrolizumab is a PD-1 blocking antibody approved in more than 40 settings, from melanoma and lung cancer to the first tumour-agnostic approval for mismatch-repair-deficient tumours in 2017, and before and after surgery in triple-negative breast cancer. A subcutaneous form arrived in 2025, and it is the backbone partner for ADCs and personalised neoantigen vaccines.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
| Side effect | Any grade | Grade 3+ |
|---|---|---|
| Hypothyroidism (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 8% | - |
| Pneumonitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 3.4% | - |
| Colitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 1.7% | - |
| Hepatitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 0.7% | - |
Rates from the label or pivotal trial as recorded on the product page; each grade 3+ figure links to its source.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Lifelong levothyroxine with risk-adapted TSH targets; calcium/PTH monitoring after surgery; salivary care after radioiodine; low-risk patients can be discharged to primary care.
This setting names no product or technology record yet; the approach above is the standard as written. Ask your team which specific treatments they mean.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.