Managing Quality of Life After Iodine Treatment for Thyroid Cancer

After receiving radioactive iodine treatment for thyroid cancer, it’s important for patients to utilize the resources that are available, such as fertility preservation and speech therapy, an expert told CURE®.

Managing quality of life during and after treatment for thyroid cancer may be challenging, especially because of the radioactive iodine needed during treatment. However, there are things doctors can do to help patients retain the best quality of life possible, as Dr. Noah S. Kalman, a radiation oncologist at Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health South Florida said during an interview.

He noted that even patients’ diets have to temporarily change, in which they need to maintain a low-salt diet.

“That is probably the most difficult part about the treatment itself and having to follow that diet for a number of weeks,” he told Targeted Oncology®, a sister brand of CURE®. “That’s what we get the most complaints about from patients, as it can be very disruptive.”

Because quality of life is altered after treatment, Kalman emphasized that utilizing available resources is crucial. Fertility preservation, he said, is something patients may be interested in, which foundations and advocacy groups can help with regarding costs.

Resources are also available to help patients with some of the side effects experienced after treatment, such as dry mouth and difficulty swallowing. From medications to help with dry mouth to speech therapy, there are effective strategies to help patients’ symptoms, Kalman said.

He sat down to discuss what patients can do after receiving radioactive iodine treatment for thyroid cancer and examples of resources that are available.

Transcript:

Things like [patients’] diet that they need to pursue with they're getting radioactive iodine treatment, and just resources that they can have available for after treatment and for patients that are interested in fertility preservation, there are some foundations that try to help cover some of the cost of doing that. That’s really a big help for our patients.

Generally, when patients are diagnosed with any kind of cancer, it’s an exceptionally stressful [and] anxiety-inducing moment. I think we try to impart to patients that for a lot of these differentiated thyroid cancers, papillary thyroid cancer, follicular [thyroid cancer], we expect them to have really excellent outcomes. We want them to continue all their plans for their lives and continue to live their lives as normally as possible.

If patients do have some issues with treatment, whether it’s dry mouth from the radioactive iodine, some patients can have occasionally some swallowing issues after their thyroid surgery, [but] there are some resources available. There are speech therapies, there are medications to help with dry mouth — there are things we can do to help manage some of these patients’ symptoms going forward.

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