Association of the Word Cancer With Thyroid Cancer Treatment Decisions—A Rose by Any Other Name

摘要

In Nickel et al’s article, “Association of Preferences for Papillary Thyroid Cancer Treatment With Disease Terminology: A Discrete Choice Experiment,”1 the authors highlight important issues in thyroid cancer treatment decisions. First, the authors show that the cancer label is associated with a willingness to accept greater harm. When presenting 2054 adults with a discrete choice experiment, the label “papillary thyroid cancer” was associated with a greater willingness to accept more harms than the label “papillary thyroid lesion.” This finding is not unique to thyroid cancer—prior authors have recognized the psychological impact of a cancer label and its relationship to overtreatment.2 However, although a name change has recently occurred for a subtype of thyroid cancer, encapsulated follicular variant of papillary thyroid cancer,3 it is unlikely that classic variant of papillary thyroid cancer will receive a new name in the near future. The solution to the harmful effects of a “papillary thyroid cancer” label may lie in patient education instead of a new name.