Cancer risk after medical exposure to radioactive iodine in benign thyroid diseases: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Radioiodine-131 (131I) is widely used for diagnosis and treatment of benign thyroid diseases. Observational studies have not been conclusive about the carcinogenic potential of 131I and we therefore conducted a meta-analysis. We performed a literature search till September 2011 which included 131I as a diagnostic or treatment modality ( 131I for treatment of thyroid cancer was excluded). Data on 64 different organ or organ group subsets comprising 22 029 exposed subjects in the therapeutic cohorts and 24 799 in the diagnostic cohorts in seven studies were included. Outcome was pooled as the relative risk (RR) using both standard and bias adjusted methods. Quality assessment was performed usi..