June 13th, 2011

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes:

Mary Jane McCarty was having her regular physical exam in November 2006 when her primary care physician, Carol Azar, said she thought she felt something in Ms. McCarty’s neck.

Dr. Azar sent Ms. McCarty, 59, of Forest Hills, right from her office to have an ultrasound, and that same afternoon she called to confirm that there was indeed something in her neck that would require a biopsy.

By the time the results of that test came back, Ms. McCarty had gotten a referral to Shelly McQuone, chief of the Division of Otolaryngology at West Penn Hospital, who called her new patient into her office. There, Dr. McQuone told Ms. McCarty that she had thyroid cancer.

It’s a diagnosis that was given to more than 44,000 Americans last year, according to a projection by the National Cancer Institute. But that number is increasing — “faster in recent years than any other cancer,” said endocrinologist Wayne Evron, medical director of the Joslin Diabetes Center Affiliate at West Penn Hospital.

Nearly 76 percent of those so diagnosed were women.

Thyroid cancer is the fastest growing cancer in women in the United States, pathologist Yuri Nikiforov, a UPMC/University of Pittsburgh thyroid researcher, said in a paper he submitted for publication. It is, in fact, the seventh-most common cancer in women, Dr. Evron said.

That they get more thyroid cancer than men is not surprising: Women suffer from all thyroid disorders at rates estimated by local experts as anywhere from three to five times as frequently as men.

Read the rest of the story at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette