RAI, which stands for radioactive iodine ablation, is a procedure commonly used to treat hyperthyroidism and Graves’ disease. It’s also used to treat other conditions such as toxic multinodular goiter and thyroid cancer but most people get this procedure done for hyperthyroidism.

When you are in a state of hyperthyroidism everything in your body is in overdrive. If untreated this can be harmful to the body so most doctors suggest RAI. This is a procedure which has been used since the 1940s to destroy the thyroid gland.

The logic behind it was no thyroid gland which means no excess thyroid hormone production,

A new study  suggests that there is a fairly strong connection between undergoing RAI and your risk of cancer as you progress through life.

This study, which looked at over 18,000 people, showed a positive correlation between the dose of radiation received during RAI in various tissues and your risk of developing cancer in those tissues. This means that the higher the dose of radiation you are exposed to, the higher your risk of developing cancer becomes. Just being exposed to radiation does not guarantee that you develop cancer though, so I don’t want you to think that.

The study found: For every 1,000 patients treated with RAI, about 13 of that 1,000 would die of cancer of the breast or stomach if they received a dose of 100 mGy or more