Removing the Thyroid From Images, Not From Patients
Menée aux Etats-Unis à partir de données portant sur 14 987 hommes atteints d’un cancer de la thyroïde diagnostiqué entre 2001 et 2018, cette étude analyse l’impact, sur l’incidence de la maladie, d’une surveillance médicale accrue chez les personnels médicaux et de sauvetage travaillant sur le site du World Trade Center après l’attentat (exposition sur la période 11 septembre 2001- 25 juillet 2002)
In March 2011, a major earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, causing the reactor to melt down. Five years later, children living near the plant were reported to have rates of thyroid cancer 20 to 50 times that of other children in Japan.1 This finding, however, appeared to stem from a systematic thyroid ultrasonographic screening program—one that did not extend to the rest of Japan. Other investigators applying the same screening protocol to children in other Japanese regions found that the rate of thyroid cancer detected by screening did not differ meaningfully from that in the Fukushima region.2 In other words, the apparent epidemic was the result of screening, not radiation.
JAMA Internal Medicine , commentaire, 2019