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The American Cancer Society’s most recent estimates for thyroid cancer in the United States are for 2024:
Thyroid cancer is often diagnosed at a younger age than most other adult cancers. The average age when a person is diagnosed with thyroid cancer is 51.
This cancer is about 3 times more common in women than in men. It is about 40% to 50% less common in Black people than in any other racial or ethnic group.
Until recently, rate of new thyroid cancers was growing faster than for any other cancer in the US. This was largely due to increased detection during imaging tests such as CT or MRI scans that were done for other medical problems. These sensitive tests can sometimes detect small thyroid nodules that might not otherwise have been found (and many of which might never have caused any problems). However, due in part to adoption of more stringent criteria for diagnosing thyroid cancer, the incidence rate has declined by about 2% each year since 2014.
The death rate for thyroid cancer has stayed about the same since 2009.
Statistics on survival rates for thyroid cancer are discussed in Survival Rates for Thyroid Cancer.
Visit the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Statistics Center for more key statistics.
The American Cancer Society medical and editorial content team
Our team is made up of doctors and oncology certified nurses with deep knowledge of cancer care as well as journalists, editors, and translators with extensive experience in medical writing.
American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts & Figures 2024. Atlanta: American Cancer Society; 2024.
National Cancer Institute. SEER Cancer Stat Facts: Thyroid Cancer. 2022. Bethesda, MD. Accessed at https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/thyro.html on January 18, 2023.
Last Revised: January 17, 2024
American Cancer Society medical information is copyrighted material. For reprint requests, please see our Content Usage Policy.
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