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[Why choose Mayo Clinic for thyroid treatment]
Melanie L. Lyden, M.D., Endocrine Surgery: We treat a number of different thyroid conditions. It can be thyroid cancer, most often papillary thyroid cancer or medullary thyroid cancer. Most are actually benign nodules. Sometimes people can have large goiters, something that can interfere with breathing or swallowing. Other people may have thyroid nodules that are making too much hormone. We call that a toxic nodule or patients that have Graves' disease, which is a form of too much thyroid hormone.
Trenton R. Foster, M.D., Endocrine Surgery: The multidisciplinary team really revolves around the idea that an endocrinologist, as well as an endocrine surgeon will evaluate a patient together.
Dr. Lyden: When a patient is coming from out of town, we work to consolidate their care so that their appointments are streamlined. We arrange to get the ultrasound, the blood tests, the biopsy, a visit with the surgeon, and then surgery all during one visit.
Dr. Foster: Frozen section pathology is something that we have available to us for all of our procedures here at Mayo Clinic. So we can take a biopsy of something that we find at the time of surgery and have it evaluated, while the patient is still asleep even, to determine whether this is something of concern or something not.
Dr. Lyden: The one thing that I find that makes a huge difference for patients and their outcome is our radiologists and the ultrasound. To be able to do the lymph node mapping, so as a surgeon I know where the disease is, and we're not leaving cancer behind.
Dr. Foster: Mayo Clinic has a wide range of treatment options available. We do treat patients with medical therapies. We can offer surgical therapies for those that are appropriate. We can also offer some non-surgical treatment options, including things like alcohol ablation, radiofrequency ablation, or other ablative techniques as well. And everything that is out there is available here at Mayo Clinic. We have all of the latest imaging techniques. We have the latest treatment options available, and we have true experts in their field.
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