ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC REPORT Quality of Life in Thyroid Cancer is Similar to That of Other Cancers with Worse Survival Megan K. Applewhite 1 • Benjamin C. James 1 • Sharone P. Kaplan 1 • Peter Angelos 1 • Edwin L. Kaplan 1 • Raymon H. Grogan 1 • Briseis Aschebrook-Kilfoy 2 Published online: 6 November 2015 Ó Socie ´te ´ Internationale de Chirurgie 2015 Abstract Background The incidence of thyroid cancer is increasing. As such, the number of survivors is rising, and it has been shown that their quality of life (QOL) is worse than expected. Using results from the North American Thyroid Cancer Survivorship Study (NATCSS), a large-scale survivorship study, we aim to compare the QOL of thyroid cancer survivors to the QOL of survivors of other types of cancer. Methods The NATCSS assessed QOL overall and in four subcategories: physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being using the QOL-Cancer Survivor (QOL-CS) instrument. Studies that used the QOL-CS to evaluate survivors of other types of cancers were compared to the NATCSS findings using two-tailed t tests. Results We compared results from NATCSS to QOL survivorship studies in colon, glioma, breast, and gynecologic cancer. The mean overall QOL in NATCSS was 5.56 (on a scale of 0–10, where 10 is the best). Overall QOL of patients with thyroid cancer was similar to that of patients with colon cancer (mean 5.20, p = 0.13), glioma (mean 5.96, p = 0.23), and gynecologic cancer (mean 5.59, p = 0.43). It was worse than patients surveyed with breast cancer (mean 6.51, p \ 0.01). Conclusions We found the self-reported QOL of thyroid cancer survivors in our study population is overall similar to or worse than that of survivors of other types of cancer surveyed with the same instrument. This should heighten awareness of the significance of a thyroid cancer diagnosis and highlights the need for further research in how to improve care for this enlarging group of patients. Introduction Health-related quality of life (QOL) measurement in cancer patients allows physicians to better understand the com- plexity of taking care of patients with cancer [1]. With validated QOL assessment tools, the patient can be eval- uated from the perspective of not only physical well-being, but also psychological, social, and spiritual well-being [2, 3]. Preliminary findings from The North American Thyroid Cancer Survivorship Study (NATCSS), our study of thy- roid cancer survivorship, found that poor QOL outcomes for thyroid cancer survivors are common and are observed for many years post treatment [4]. These results are con- sistent with other studies reporting decreased postoperative & Megan K. Applewhite megan.applewhite@uchospitals.edu Briseis Aschebrook-Kilfoy brisa@uchicago.edu 1 Endocrine Surgery Research Group, Department of Surgery, The University of Chicago, 5841 S. Maryland Ave. MC 4052, Chicago, IL 60637, USA 2 Division of Epidemiology, Department of Health Studies, The University of Chicago, 5841 S. Maryland Ave. MC 2007, N112, Chicago, IL 60637, USA 123 World J Surg (2016) 40:551–561 DOI 10.1007/s00268-015-3300-5