See Dr Tom Milner’s presentation of our RAI Patient Survey at the World Congress on Thyroid Cancer 2017 – click here.

Please help us by completing our new survey on thyroid surgery, it only takes a couple of minutes!

Click Here

Thank you.

Dr Tom Milner presented the results of our RAI UK Patient Survey at the World Congress on Thyroid Cancer in Boston last week!

You can see his presentation by clicking here.

BTCT are delighted to have funded the update of the RAI isolation rooms at NCCC Freeman Hospital in Newcastle.

As you can see from the photos patients will have a much more welcoming environment.

We are rolling our a plan to offer this service to other units across the UK one the next two years.

A trial looking at selumetinib for thyroid cancer that has stopped taking up radioactive iodine (SEL-I-METRY).

The Selimetry trial is now open at the Royal Marsden and more centres will be open soon.

Continue reading “Selimetry Trials” →

Butterfly Thyroid Cancer Trust is delighted to be supporting this exciting research project: Near Infrared Autofluorescence of the Parathyroid Glands:
A Novel Method for Reducing the Incidence of Permanent Hypoparathyroidism Following Total Thyroidectomy for Thyroid Cancer.
Aimee N. di Marco, Neil S. Tolley, F. Fausto Palazzo
A low level of calcium in the blood (‘hypocalcaemia’) affects up to a quarter of patients following surgery for thyroid cancer. It results when the blood supply to the very tiny parathyroid glands (attached to the thyroid) is affected during surgery. If the parathyroid function does not recover it may require lifelong treatment with calcium and vitamin D. This ‘hypoparathyroidism’ may significantly affect patients’ quality of life due to the need for medication, monitoring and in the long term it may potentially cause problems with kidney function, neurological complications and infections.
The aim of this project is to see if it is possible to exploit a natural property of parathyroid tissue, ‘autofluorescence’, to prevent hypoparathyroidism. Until now, surgeons have had to rely entirely on their experience in the identification of the parathyroid glands and their judgment as to whether their blood supply is sufficient to function normally. In this study, Mr. Palazzo, Professor Tolley and team will be using the ‘Fluobeam 800’ (a near-infrared camera which detects autofluorescence) to check for unrecognized parathyroids on the thyroid gland during surgery and see whether this allows more parathyroid glands to be preserved in situ or, if they do not have a good enough blood supply, allow them to be transplanted into the neck muscle (‘autotransplantation’).
The team is very grateful to the Butterfly Thyroid Cancer Trust for the support which is enabling them to carry out this study: they hope that this work will provide a valuable insight into the effectiveness of this exciting new technology and translate into direct benefit to patients undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer.

Kate Farnelll MBE, Dr Kate Newbold and Mr Saba Balasubramanian discuss the “Over Diagnosis of Thyroid Cancer ‘ with Dr Mark Porter on BBC Radio Fours’s Inside Health.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019dl1b