An observant hygiene student at a North Carolina dental clinic noticed an enlarged thyroid during a routine prophylaxis of an elderly woman patient, who subsequently had the cancerous growth successfully removed, according to a story on jdnews.com.
Mary Meyler, 71, a longtime patient at the Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, NC, went in for a routine checkup in December when Kaylah Piner, a 23-year-old second-year dental hygiene student, noticed that Meyler had an enlarged thyroid.
Piner recognized the symptoms because her own mother had had thyroid cancer. Doctors told Meyler that the cancer would have spread to her lymph nodes if the hygienist hadn't noticed it. Meyler subsequently had the growth successfully removed.
Thyroid cancer is the fifth most common cancer in women, but the five-year survival rate is 97% if detected early, according to the American Cancer Society.
