Radioactive iodine for thyroid cancer linked to risk for melanoma, other skin cancers
Source: Healio, November 2024
Key takeaways:
- Patients with primary thyroid cancer who received radioactive iodine therapy had elevated risk for melanoma/skin cancer.
- Patients treated for thyroid cancer may benefit from subsequent skin cancer screening.
Patients with primary thyroid cancer who received radioactive iodine exhibited increased risk for melanoma and other nonkeratinocyte skin cancers, according to study results.
“Radioactive iodine therapy is a mainstay treatment for thyroid cancer, with associated reductions in all-cause and cancer-specific mortality,” Shawheen J. Rezaei, MPhil, a Knight-Hennessy Scholar from Stanford University and MD student with scholarly concentration in health services and policy research, and colleagues wrote. “Although the risks [for] subsequent cancer do not outweigh the benefits of treatment, our findings suggest that patients treated for thyroid cancer may benefit from follow-up skin cancer screening.”