Asking your doctor the right questions about thyroid cancer can help you get the right treatment. In this video, Eric Genden, MD, chairman of the department of otolaryngology at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, shares five questions you should ask.
Well you know I think that the key is understanding some of the very specifics about this. Before the days of Internet it was difficult to understand and know really what to ask. We find at Mt. Cyanide that education of the patient is the single most important aspect of their care it's empowering, and we literally sit down and have a mini-medical school conversation and explain to the patient what's the nature of the thyroid gland? Why do these develop cancer? What are the types of cancer? What do you have? What's the prognosis and what's the treatment and kind of go through it from ship to nuts so that they have a really good understanding a thorough full thickness understanding of what the disease process is.
First of all that takes a little bit of a fear out of it I think when you understand it, and second of all it helps you to rationalize the approach to therapy questions that you should be asking, what type of cancer do I have? Is this common? How is this treated? What's the prognosis? What are the side effects toxicities or the complications in treating this? And what are my options? Or is there more than one option? Not everybody requires surgery, not everybody requires radiotherapy.
And so understanding this in a real complete way I think can put a lot of patients at ease.[MUSIC].
Thyroid disorders are especially common among women. Learn how to recognize the symptoms of an overactive thyroid (hyperthyroidism) or underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism), and find out about the different treatment options.
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