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Korea's Thyroid-Cancer “Epidemic” — Screening and Overdiagnosis

List of authors.
  • Hyeong Sik Ahn, M.D., Ph.D.,
  • Hyun Jung Kim, M.P.H., Ph.D.,
  • and H. Gilbert Welch, M.D., M.P.H.

In 2011, the rate of thyroid-cancer diagnoses in the Republic of Korea was 15 times that observed in 1993, yet thyroid-cancer mortality remains stable — a combination that suggests that the problem is overdiagnosis attributable to widespread thyroid-cancer screening.

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Funding and Disclosures

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.

Author Affiliations

From the Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea (H.S.A., H.J.K.); and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Hanover, NH (H.G.W.)

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