Brief Answer: Third surgery is necessary. Refer to answer below Detailed Answer: Hello, Thanks for posting your query on HealthCareMagic. The history given by you tells that you had a minimally follicular carcinoma in the left lobe of the thyroid. The management of minimally invasive follicular carcinoma is total thyroidectomy. In the first surgery, one one lobe was removed since the fine needle aspiration reported it as adenomatous nodule. Sometimes, exact diagnosis cannot be made on FNAC because it solely depends on the cells sampled. FNAC is a blind procedure so the cancerous cells could have been missed on it. After the first surgery, the lesion turned out to be a cancer, thus necessating total thyroidectomy. After total thyroidectomy a radioactive iodine uptake was done. Radioactive iodine is picked up by functioning thyroid cells and not by other tissue since thyroid cells are rich in iodine. The radio active iodine uptake showed presence of thyroid cells, thus showing that some residual thyroid tissue is still present which may develop cancer at later stage. Thus, this third surgery is necessary and radio active iodine uptake needs to be repeated to check the completeness of the surgery. Kindly, be patient. The treatment is for your benefit. If you have more queries, I will be glad to answer. Dr Shailja P Wahal

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