Thyroid

Thirteen million Americans have been diagnosed with various forms of thyroid disease. Among them were such famous people as former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, actress Catherine Bell, fiction writer Isaac Asimov, singer Rod Stewart, and actor Joe Piscopo.

Most of those who get the disease get it as a result of exposure to radiation. In 2003, Coney Island Hospital began aggressively screening patients from the former Soviet Union who may have been exposed to radiation during the Chernobyl Catastrophe in 1986. Statistics of screenings of hundreds of patients show that 20 years later:

• Autoimmune thyroiditis (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an inflammation
 of the thyroid gland) is much higher than among non-exposed people

• Autoimmune thyroiditis noticeably increases the risk of malignant
 lympho-proliferated diseases

• The younger the individual was during the exposure and the closer
  he/she was to Chernobyl the more likely he or she is to develop
 complications including thyroid tumor and other thyroid disease

• Because thyroid cancer may not occur until 20 years after exposure
 to radiation, incidents of this disease are on the rise among Chernobyl  survivors    

Patients diagnosed with thyroid problems during the screening were successfully treated at Coney Island Hospital.

Thyroid (Endocrinology)
• Location: 305
• Hours: (New Patients) Wednesday 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM;
(Revisits) Wednesday 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
(New Patients and Revisits) Thursday 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM
• Telephone: (718) 616-4002