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People with thyroid cancer can choose from many different treatment options. These options include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Patients should develop a tailored treatment plan through careful discussion with their doctors. Oncologists will advise specific treatments based on the location and stage of a patient's thyroid cancer. The most common thyroid cancer treatment is surgery.

There are three main types of surgical thyroid cancer treatments. In the first type of surgery, called a lobectomy, a surgeon removes just one of the thyroid's lobes. This surgical option is often utilized for very small, non-agressive cancers that have not spread beyond one lobe. In the second type of surgery, which is known as a near-total thyroidectomy, almost all of the thyroid is removed. However, a small non-cancerous portion of the thyroid is left behind in the hopes that the paient will not require as much thyroid hormone replacement therapy after surgery. The third type of surgery is a total thyroidectomy, in which a surgeon removes a patient's entire thyroid.

Thanks to recent technological advances, it is no longer necessary for surgeons performing surgical thyroid treatments to make gigantic incisions all the way across patients' necks. Instead, they can make much smaller incisions that result in less visible surgery scars. Smaller incisions also result in faster recovery times. Most thyroid cancer surgeries only take a few short hours, and patients can usually go home to recuperate the same day. After just a few days to a week of resting at home, patients can often get right back to work, as long as their jobs are not too physically strenuous.

Sometimes oncologists suggest additional thyroid cancer treatments to patients who have undergone thyroid surgery. These treatments include supplementary radiation or chemotherapy to make sure that any stray cancer cells that might have been left behind by the surgery are destroyed. In many cases, however, such additional treatments are not necessary because surgery alone often gets the job done. A patient who has undergone a total thyroidectomy will need thyroid hormone replacement therapy. Since they no longer have their thyroid glands, these patients must take thyroid hormone pills daily for the rest of their lives.

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