Thyroid cancer usually has no obvious symptoms from the beginning when the disease appears. Therefore, the patient will be very difficult to identify. In rare cases, thyroid cancer has the first symptoms of a secondary tumor in the bone or lungs after the cancer has spread beyond the thyroid.

General features of early thyroid cancer symptoms:

– The vast majority of thyroid cancer progresses silently, slowly and in a long time, so patients often do not immediately notice changes in the whole body, still working and living normally. until the local disorders due to tumor compression, invasion (dyspnea and inability to eat), necrotic tumors, superinfection and ulcers, then the whole body will deteriorate seriously.

– Symptoms of early thyroid cancer:

Tumor: usually discovered by a patient or family member, enlargement gradually, moving in the rhythm of swallowing, can be located anywhere of the thyroid gland. Usually there is a single nucleus but sometimes there are many nuclei and located in both thyroid lobes. The density is usually firm, the surface is often rugged.

Lymph nodes: sometimes U can not touch but have lymph nodes in the neck. However, these early symptoms are difficult to distinguish from a benign tumor, so when there are cervical lymph nodes with tumors with the above properties, you must always be alert and seek diagnostic measures to identify early cancer.

Symptoms of late thyroid cancer:

– Tumor: sometimes quite large, encroaching forward, backward, up two poles on two corners of the jaw and down into the mediastinum (clinical examination cannot touch the lower pole of U).

The surface is often rugged, the density is hard, there are soft places. In particular, the tumor attaches tightly and invades the neck organs so the boundary is not clear and the mobility is low. Sometimes the tumor invades and ulcers through the skin of the neck, causing bleeding and local superinfection. One of the late warning signs of thyroid cancer.

– Hoarseness, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, swallowing … to varying degrees as the tumor grows and encapsulates surrounding organs. These symptoms are encountered at high and early rates, especially in undifferentiated cancers

– Feeling of entanglement, tightness in the neck: is a common symptom of thyroid cancer, sometimes the sensation of pain at U spreads to the angle of the jaw, the parietal ears due to U compression and stimulation of nerve plexus neck.

– Enlarged lymph nodes in the neck area (along both sides of the trachea, along the inner, outer and posterior posterior sternal muscle, angle of jaw, upper lash…).

The common clinical manifestations by type of thyroid cancer:

– Papillary thyroid cancer: The manifestation of papillary thyroid cancer is that the tumor gradually enlarges in the neck, this tumor is painless, hoarseness is also divided into different levels. Papillary thyroid cancer is often discovered by a patient or doctor, so it is too late to start treatment and it is easy to misdiagnose it as a benign tumor. The thyroid gland in patients with papillary thyroid cancer is not changed, but some patients may develop hyperthyroidism.

– Follicular thyroid cancer: The first finding of the patient is a tumor in the thyroid gland, the tumor grows very fast, its tumor size is medium, the boundaries are unclear, the surface is not smooth, the degree of works well. The tumor invades the adjacent fixed tissue behind the thyroid gland, manifested by hoarseness, some patients may develop metastases.

– Medullary thyroid cancer: When diagnosed in patients for the first time, manifested mainly as painless hard tumor, localized enlargement of lymph nodes. If the tumor invades nerves in the throat, hoarseness may appear. Ultrasound examination not only observes the size, location, and number of tumors in the thyroid gland, but also can detect the status of surrounding lymph nodes.

– Undifferentiated thyroid cancer:

• The vast majority of patients have tumors in the neck and before the onset of illness there was no enlargement of the thyroid gland, hard tumors, and rapid growth.
• The thyroid gland is swollen and has distant metastases.
• A person with a long history of thyroid cancer, the thyroid tumor suddenly grows large and becomes rock hard.

Early stage thyroid cancer does not have noticeable symptoms, but if you find yourself having these symptoms in daily life, you should immediately go to the clinic for examination and timely treatment.

According to Hung viet cancer hospital