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- At Significantly Higher Risk
- • Exposure to radiation therapy , especially between 1920 and 1950, for enlarged lymph nodes in the neck,
- mastoiditis, tonsils, whooping cough, acne, enlarged thymus gland, keloids and fungal infections. The
- incidence directly relates to the amount of radiation given and inversely with the age of the person at the time
- of exposure. It generally takes 10 to 30 years after radiation exposure for a tumor to develop.
- Thyroid cancer will develop in about 5 percent of children treated with low-dose radiation to the head and
- neck. Four percent of thyroid cancer patients have a history of such radiation therapy. Factors for increasing
- the risk after radiation exposure include female sex, younger age at exposure and a longer interval after
- radiation.
- Forty percent of patients with thyroid nodules and a history of exposure to external radiation have thyroid
- cancer.
-
- At Slightly Higher Risk
- • Papillary carcinoma is increased in people with familial colon polyposis (multiple polyps of the colon),
- deficiency in the blood clotting Factor XI, and several other rare diseases.
- • Risk for medullary carcinoma is inherited from one parent (autosomal-dominant) in 50 percent of patients.
- • More anaplastic and follicular carcinomas develop in people from areas with endemic goiter. Eighty percent of
- patients with anaplastic carcinoma have a history of nodular goiter.