Clayman Thyroid Center Performs 1000th Cancer Surgery At New Hospital For Endocrine Surgery

TAMPA, Fla., April 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery in Tampa, Florida completed its 1000^th surgery last week. The milestone comes less than three months after the hospital opened in January 2022 as a first-of-its-kind facility dedicated to the surgical treatment of thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal tumors and cancers.

The 1000^th endocrine tumor surgery was a thyroid cancer performed by Dr Gary Clayman and Dr Rashmi Roy of the Clayman Thyroid Center. The Clayman Thyroid Center is America's highest volume thyroid surgery center, performing nearly 2,000 thyroid operations annually. Their reputation means patients from all over the US and many foreign countries travel to Tampa for their thyroid surgery.

"It's incredible to have hit this milestone in less than 3 months from the new hospital opening," said Dr. Gary Clayman. "More than half of our patients live in other states or other countries, showing that they are prioritizing their health and traveling to see best-in-class surgeons at an amazing specialty hospital dedicated to the treatment of thyroid cancer. It was very fitting that our 1000th patient was a young woman from New Mexico suffering from papillary thyroid cancer. It is now the fastest growing cancer among young women, but it's extremely curable if treated buy an expert thyroid surgeon."

Amanda, a young mother recently diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer, traveled across the country to have surgery at the new hospital. After her diagnosis, Amanda did her research and considered every option available to her.

"I'm young," she said. "I have a 6-month-old and I couldn't believe the diagnosis of cancer. When you have a baby and you hear the word cancer… Your mind goes a million miles an hour. You're thinking, 'am I going to see my son grow up'?"

She and her husband met with local surgeons and looked into other major hospitals and universities around the country, willing to go wherever they believe she would have the best outcome.

"We looked at MD Anderson, we looked at the Mayo Clinic, and we looked at Cleveland Clinic," Amanda's husband said. "None of their websites had enough information on this disease, their procedures and who their surgeons were. All of their surgeons do multiple different types of surgery—they don't sub-specialize and do high volume like they do at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery. We just did not feel comfortable with them."

They ultimately found the information they were looking for at www.thyroidcancer.com, the Clayman Thyroid Center's website.

"The website is really helpful because I had all the information I needed all in one spot," Amanda said. "I didn't have to visit 20 different websites. To be quite honest, after we found that website, we didn't really look anywhere else. I learned everything I needed to know about my disease in one place."

Of course, the young family faced some anxiety about traveling with a baby and gave some consideration for staying local and not traveling to seek the best surgical care.

"I'm on a lot of hiring panels at work and I know we are not supposed to put bias into our decision. We make decisions based on objective criteria such as experience and past success," Amanda said. "Once I got into that mindset, it was an easy decision. Dr. Clayman is extremely high volume and has been doing this for 30 years. You simply can't compete with that. After I looked at it that way, I stopped letting emotion drive me toward convenience and made the decision that was best for my health and overall outcome."

"Trying to figure out which surgeon to go to—the one close by, or the one across the country was a big decision," Amanda said. "We prayed about it, we talked to our friends, we talked to our priest, trying to take everything into account- physically, mentally, spiritually. We talked with a friend of ours who had the same type of cancer I had about 20 years prior, and she really affirmed my decision. She wasn't able to do this type of in-depth research back then, she just went to the local doctor she was referred to, and she ended up having complications because they didn't get all of her cancer out during the first surgery."

Unfortunately, recurrent thyroid cancer occurs quite frequently for a variety of reasons. First, expert ultrasound evaluation of the entire neck is required of all patients prior to thyroid surgery—something that is not done routinely by most surgeons and hospitals. Second, most thyroid surgeons are quite inexperienced performing less than 10 thyroid cancer operations per year. Finally, nearly half of all patients with thyroid cancer will not know their diagnosis of thyroid cancer until their first operation is completed. By then it's too late to do a better "cancer" operation and the patient is at high risk for the cancer to recur, and thus need a second operation.

"The other thing that put us at ease is that they have someone from pathology right there in the operating room who is able to tell you right then and there if they got all the cancer out or if they need to take out more," said Amanda's husband. "That got me thinking about if we got the surgery elsewhere, do they assume they got it all out and then 10 years down the road we find out they didn't?"

As a patient, you have direct control the quality of your thyroid surgery by selecting the best, most experienced thyroid surgeon, thereby greatly decreasing the chance of obtaining the wrong or incomplete thyroid operation. The Clayman Thyroid Center's surgeons are some of the most experienced thyroid surgeons in the world, performing nearly 2,000 thyroid operations annually. Operating out of the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery, the Center is a full-service thyroid surgery practice, offering the most advanced forms of thyroid surgery for all types of thyroid tumors, from small thyroid nodules to complex recurrent thyroid cancers.

The Clayman Thyroid Center moved into its new home at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery in January 2022, joining the surgeons of the Norman Parathyroid Center, Scarless Thyroid Surgery Center and Carling Adrenal Center. Combined, these specialized centers make up the highest volume endocrine surgery practice in the world by almost two-fold.

"I came to Tampa 6 years ago from MD Anderson Cancer Center with the dream of building something unique in all of medicine—a surgical practice and a hospital where excellence is the only acceptable outcome. We now operate out of an amazing new facility designed with thyroid cancer patients in mind. Within this fantastic building are housed the best equipment and the best people—doctors, nurses and techs who have dedicated their careers to treating and curing endocrine tumors and cancers. I can honestly say there is no other hospital like this in all the world. Patients around the world come here for treatment, and will set the standard for outcomes for patients with thyroid cancers, parathyroid and adrenal tumors."

"We walked in and we said, this doesn't look like a hospital," said Amanda. "It's so modern and comfortable. The staff is so fantastic, and the experience was so personalized. You're traveling across the country because you have cancer, but when you arrive here it doesn't feel like that. I don't like hospitals and I'm sure lots of people don't, so it was a really different experience."

About the Clayman Thyroid Center:
Founded by one of the nation's best-known thyroid surgeons, the Clayman Thyroid Center is the highest volume thyroid cancer referral center in the United States. The Center boasts the most experienced thyroid surgeons in the US who provide personalized care allowing the greatest opportunity for cancer cure, wellness, and cosmetic and functional outcomes via all types of thyroid surgery from minimal incision to scarless thyroid surgery to advanced cancer care.
www.thyroidcancer.com | (813) 940-3130

Contact: Julie Canan, Director of Marketing
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941 468 3002

SOURCE Clayman Thyroid Center