a familiar face that you have seen on
the local station for years will be out
on medical leave for a while
Deborah Norville host of Inside Edition
says that she's undergoing surgery today
to remove a cancerous nodule on her
thyroid you know we live in a world of
sees something say something and I'm
really glad we do when you work on
television viewers comment on everything
your hair your makeup the dress you're
wearing and a long time ago an Inside
Edition viewer reached out to say she'd
seen something on my neck it was a lump
well I'd never noticed the thing but I
did have it checked out and the doctor
said it was nothing a thyroid nodule and
for years it was nothing until recently
it was something so you know the same
thing happened to Tarek el Moussa from
flip or flop three years ago a viewer
noticed that lump we've circled it for
you that he got checked out and he
actually had surgery to remove it he
says it saved his life this morning we
are talking health with dr. Scott
Ackerman from the Ackerman Cancer Centre
the morning to you thank you for being
here do appreciate it
first of all let's remind our viewers
what the thyroid does if we could in the
body so the thyroid is a gland that's
low it's in the neck right overlying the
trachea and just below the voice box and
the thyroid gland produces thyroid
hormone and thyroid hormone helps with
regulation of the body's metabolism also
it regulates whether you're hot or cold
a little bit as well you hear a lot of
people complain that when they're
getting when they in the gain weight
they say almost be my thyroid and must
be petering out or something but there
we have metabolism and hot and cold now
it's interesting because the thyroid
cancer I understand is actually more
prevalent than in women than it is in
men yet considering that kind of
statistic Deborah Norville obviously
talking with her doctor years ago kind
of made the decision let's not go let's
not remove it but now it's turned into
cancer you know should you know if
you've got something like this as a
woman should you maybe consider removing
it before it turns into cancer
well lumps to the thyroid are not that
uncommon we see nodules in the thyroid
and so if you have a notch on your
thyroid you should see your physician
have it evaluated and the typical
evaluation is an ultrasound of the
thyroid and we could see on the
ultrasound whether the thyroid whether
these nodules look
malignant or not whether look if they're
concerning or not and many thyroid
nodules are not cancerous so why go
through unnecessary surgery if it's not
gonna be a cancerous nodule we biopsy
them sometimes ahead of time before we
do surgery we put a needle in and biopsy
and we could see under the microscope
whether cells in the nodule are
suspicious for cancer or not fortunately
most thyroid cancers grow slowly and
very few metastasize so it's a sort of
thing you keep an eye on if it looks
like a benign nodule and if it starts to
grow then you can operate and you're
really not any worse off by waiting and
in fact by doing surgery sooner you
might be worse off because with surgery
there's always side effects of surgery
and always there's always potential for
problems I don't say always but there's
always the potential for promise surgery
so you can avoid it without adversely
affecting your overall cure rate and
health you should is there you know a
specific warning sign then or maybe
symptoms other than actually seeing it
you know under the skin so most thyroid
cancers are nodules that you could just
you could just palpate sometimes these
tumors can over produce thyroid hormone
and they could be what we and and well
typically when they when they're a
nodule over produces thyroid hormone
that's not cancerous these tumors
typically are don't produce thyroid
hormone so it doesn't affect your
metabolism we sometimes do a nuclear
medicine scan we look for what's called
cold nodules that means they're not
taking up the ice dome they're not
producing anything and those are the
ones that are that are concerning for
malignancy are they easy then to remove
and is it likely that this could have
spread so the chances of thyroid cancer
spreading is usually pretty low most
people are cured just by doing surgery
in fact we used to recommend on everyone
who had thyroid cancer to complete
removal of thyroid gland because there
is a real percent of patients that will
have multifocal disease meaning that
it's in the other parts of the gland as
well so we want to take it all out
completely but small tumors you can just
remove half of the gland and leave the
the other other gland intact
the potential for spread is pretty low
but there is a subset of patients that
have large tumors tumors that are
multifocal tumors like go through the
capsule the prostate that have the
potential to recur and to spread and
those cases we administer radiation we
do it with radioactive iodine though
again only larger tumors ones with what
we couldn't Center what we call adverse
features and ones that have pathological
features that would predispose them to
to spread unfortunately it does not
sound like that's the case with Debra
normal because she mentioned that she
doesn't need chemo or radiation which is
certainly encouraging so we hope that
she has a speedy recovery dr. Ackerman
thank you for being here - appreciate it