Our Approach
What makes our approach to the examination, care and treatment of our patients who have thyroid cancer different than other hospitals?
Our "patient-first" philosophy, our renowned expertise and our unique methods set us apart.
Our Guidance and Support
With our "patient-first" philosophy, we consider ourselves partners with our patients during their battle with cancer. We work together as a team in order to obtain the best images of your body and get the best results from your therapy.
We assign you your own personal nuclear medicine physician assistant, nuclear medicine physician team and support staff. All of our patients receive a copy of our Thyroid Cancer Manual, a text specially prepared by our doctors here at MedStar Washington Hospital Center to educate our patients about thyroid cancer and the specifics of testing and treatment at our hospital.
Our Expertise
We care for and treat more patients than almost any other facility in the United States. We use an interdisciplinary team approach, using different kinds of specialists to help us make a diagnosis and form a treatment plan. These specialists can include endocrinologists, nuclear medicine physicists, surgeons, cytopathologists, radiologists, radiation oncologists and our radiation safety team.
Our Scanning and Treatment Procedures
We tailor our procedures to our patients, as we
- require longer imaging times, which result in better images
- perform extra views to better detect and define areas of thyroid tissue or normal radioiodine uptake
- use for all patients, different types of cameras for better detection and definition of radioiodine uptake
- use dosimetry (the radiation dose that would delivered to your organ(s) following the administration of radioactive iodine)
- offer different options for selection of radioiodine doses for treatment and ablation (radioiodine therapy that is given to destroy or ablate residual healthy thyroid tissue remaining after thyroidectomy)
- are aggressive in our approach to help reduce the likelihood and severity of potential side effects--with the first ablation or treatment