Will I Need Chemotherapy for Thyroid Cancer?

Hi, I'm Michael Yeh from UCLA Health Endocrine Surgery. I'm here to answer a common question:

Will I need chemotherapy for my thyroid cancer?

The answer is: almost certainly not.

Thyroid cancer tends to be slow-growing and rarely spreads beyond the neck. In our practice, only about 5% of the thyroid cancer patients we see end up requiring chemotherapy.

When most people hear the word "chemotherapy," they often are thinking about a friend or relative with colon, lung, or pancreatic cancer who was receiving regular infusions, losing their hair, and dealing with intense side effects. The vast majority of thyroid cancer patients do not go through anything like that.

In fact, about 75% of thyroid cancers are managed with surgery alone. Another 25% may need radioactive iodine treatment after surgery. Only around 5% require anything beyond that, such as external beam radiation therapy—and very rarely, chemotherapy.

People also often ask whether they need an oncologist if they've been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Usually, the answer is no. Most thyroid cancers are managed by a combination of the surgeon and an endocrinologist. Sometimes, a nuclear medicine physician is involved if radioactive iodine is needed. That team covers about 95% of thyroid cancer cases.

Medical oncologists typically get involved only if, after initial treatment, the cancer persists—especially if it has spread beyond the neck. And even in those cases, the chemotherapy used today is very different from what was used in the past. We now have targeted therapies, which are much more precise.

Thanks to advances in molecular diagnostics, we can now identify the specific genetic mutations driving a particular cancer, then use targeted medications that hone in on those weaknesses. Today, we are often seeing excellent results in patients with advanced thyroid cancer who are being treated with new targeted therapies. It’s amazing to witness.

So, in summary: you probably won't need chemotherapy for your thyroid cancer. And even if you do, the treatments today are more effective and less harsh than they used to be.

Patients with aggressive thyroid cancers are often presented at the UCLA Endocrine Tumor Board. This is a multidisciplinary team of about 30 specialists, each bringing a unique perspective. Together, we develop sophisticated, personalized treatment plans that no single provider could create alone. That’s the power of working at a world-class medical center like UCLA Health. We have the resources, technology, experience to treat patients using the very latest science.