Overall, a higher percentage of Fukushima children, tested in the Fiscal Year Heisei 24 (FY2012), are showing thyroid ultrasound abnormalities than the Fiscal Year Heisei 23 (FY2011) in all assessment categories. In addition, the average diameter of the tumor increased.
Higher percentages of children have nodules larger than 5.1 mm or cysts larger than 20.1 mm, which put them in the assessment B category, qualifying for the secondary examination consisting of thyroid blood tests, a more detailed thyroid ultrasound examination, and a fine-needle aspiration biopsy if warranted.
There were 205, of 40,302 examined, qualifying for the secondary examination in FY2011, and 7 of the 12 suspected cases were confirmed to have papillary thyroid cancer. In FY2012, 16 were suspected of having thyroid cancer, and 5 of them were confirmed to have papillary thyroid cancer. However, 16 is not by any means the final count for the FY2012 group, as only 27.3% of the eligible 935 children have begun the process of the secondary examination.
Notable is the fact that 442 of 935 eligible for the secondary examination are from Koriyama, where the appeal for a group evacuation was denied recently. To date, only 1.1% or 5 of the 442 Koriyama children underwent secondary examination, yet 2 are already suspected of having thyroid cancer.
2 comments:
When will all the secondary examinations be complete? Do we know?
If you refer to the next post at http://fukushimavoice-eng2.blogspot.com/2013/06/11th-prefectural-oversight-committee.html, there is a draft schedule for the H24 secondary examination in section 4(4). It shows Koriyama City's secondary examination taking well into mid-September, 2013. Then, there will be more secondary examinations for the H25 municipalities, so it will probably not be until sometime 2014 before ALL the secondary examinations are completed.
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