IT'S COSMETIC SURGERY:

Although the number of thyroid cancer diagnoses has almost tripled since 1975, most are the more common and less aggressive form of the disease known as papillary thyroid cancer, the study authors said.

"The incidence of thyroid cancer is at epidemic proportions, but it doesn't look like an epidemic of disease, it looks like an epidemic of diagnosis," said lead researcher Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

According to Welch, more people are having their neck imaged to look for blockage of the arteries or for other reasons, and nodules on the thyroid are then found.

"This means that a lot of people are having their thyroids removed for a cancer that was never going to bother them," he said.

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