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A new study has put to rest the concern that radiotherapy exposure increases a person's risk of certain cancers. The study finds very little risk of thyroid cancer for women who undergo radiotherapy for breast cancer.

Researchers in Canada studied more than 194,000 women who were diagnosed with breast cancer. They then separated the women who had radiotherapy and the women who did not. Finally, they looked at who developed thyroid cancer.

Researchers discovered that 28 women who underwent radiotherapy and 112 women who did not had radiotherapy-developed thyroid cancer. They noticed that these numbers were similar to those of the general population. Overall, they said that there was no significant increase in the risk of thyroid cancer in either group of women.

Overall, researchers concluded that the risk of thyroid cancer was so low that they termed it "undetectable" in this massive study. They however added that these results need to be confirmed in longer follow-up studies. But they believe that these findings should be reassuring to women who wish to consider radiotherapy for breast cancer.

The Cancer (2001;92:1411) also reported that a number of earlier studies had thrown up evidence of an increased risk of thyroid cancer in patients exposed to radiotherapy during childhood. However, whether the same risk exists for adults is not as well documented. There has also been an increasing concern regarding the risk of developing a second tumor in an adjacent organ as a result of scattered radiation during radiotherapy.