WEDNESDAY, Jan. 25, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Younger survivors of thyroid cancer are at increased risk for certain types of health problems later in life, according to a study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Cancer Survivorship Symposium, held from Jan. 27 to 28 in San Diego.
Brenna Blackburn, M.P.H., a graduate research assistant at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and colleagues tracked data from 3,706 thyroid cancer survivors in Utah diagnosed between 1997 and 2012. The researchers compared those patients' long-term health to that of 15,587 people who did not have thyroid cancer.
The researchers found that thyroid cancer survivors diagnosed before age 40 were five times more likely to develop peri-, endo-, or myocarditis, and more than twice as likely to develop heart valve disorders, compared to people in the other group. Patients diagnosed with thyroid cancer when young were also more than seven times more likely to develop osteoporosis, and more likely to have hypertension and cardiac dysrhythmias. Patients diagnosed when over 40 were 46 percent more likely to develop hypertension and more than twice as likely to develop osteoporosis than people who'd never had thyroid cancer.
"As the number of thyroid cancer survivors grows, more people are living with other serious health conditions resulting from treatment," Blackburn said in an American Society of Clinical Oncology news release. "It's important to understand these long-term risks so that we can not only help manage their health, but also inform how oncologists care for these patients from the onset of diagnosis."
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