Pam Bondi Has Thyroid Cancer. What Are The Early Signs?

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi was diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after she was ousted from her Justice Department position in April.

Bondi, who is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee about Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, told CNN Wednesday that she’s undergoing treatment and had surgery a few weeks ago. She said she’s still recovering and “doing well, though.”

Axios also reported Wednesday that President Donald Trump had appointed Bondi to a White House panel on artificial intelligence.

Though it’s not clear what stage of cancer Bondi has ― the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment ― thyroid cancer has a five-year survival rate of over 98% and most forms of it are treatable and permanently curable, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

She’s the second person to serve in Trump’s administration to be diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was diagnosed with early-stage thyroid cancer in 2019 while he was serving as a White House adviser.

In his memoir, Kushner wrote that he was lucky his cancer was caught early and noted his doctor “removed a substantial part of my thyroid” in surgery.

Thyroid cancer is relatively uncommon compared with other cancers, with about 45,240 cases expected in 2026.

The thyroid is a small, butterfly-shaped endocrine gland that’s located at the base of the neck, just underneath your Adam’s apple. It’s responsible for regulating your metabolism and controlling how your body converts food into energy.

The most common early sign of thyroid cancer is a lump or nodule in the front of the neck, often noticed by the patient, a family member, a dentist, or a doctor during an exam, according to Dr. Uttam Sinha, the director of the Head and Neck Center at Keck Medicine of USC in Los Angeles.

“Many early thyroid cancers cause no symptoms at all,” Sinha told HuffPost. “When symptoms occur, they may include a neck lump, swelling, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, throat discomfort, or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck. It is often detectable by physical examination and ultrasound.”

Performing “neck checks” can help people become familiar with what their thyroid gland looks and feels like, said Dr. Kartik Sehgal, the director of the Thyroid Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“Typically, the nodule will feel firmer than the rest of the thyroid gland,” he said. “Thyroid nodules are very common and frequently reported, and the overwhelming odds are that they will be benign.”

While a lump in your thyroid, called a goiter, is the most common symptom of thyroid cancer, according to the American Thyroid Association, over 90% of all thyroid goiters are benign and could be linked to another condition like hypothyroidism or iodine deficiency.

Still, if you have a bump, it’s best to have it checked by your primary care doctor, said Dr. Jason Cohen, a surgical oncologist and general surgeon in treating thyroid and parathyroid disease in Los Angeles.

Once a thyroid nodule is detected, patients are referred to an endocrinologist, where an ultrasound can determine if the thyroid gland lump looks suspicious.

“Getting a thyroid ultrasound is the best test to evaluate for suspicious findings,” Cohen told HuffPost. “Plus, they’re fairly inexpensive and safe, with no radiation involved.”

If the ultrasound shows concerning features, a fine needle aspiration biopsy is performed, where the endocrinologist or pathologist uses a small needle to remove tissue or fluid from the thyroid to examine it for cancer cells, Sehgal explained.

Most thyroid cancers are diagnosed early in Stage 1. It tends to occur more in younger patients under the age of 55. Bondi is 60, but the average age for a diagnosis is 51, according to Dr. Kaniksha Desai, a clinical professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California.

In the U.S., it is nearly three times more common in women than in men.

“One of the reasons that it’s thought to be more common in women is, a woman’s hormones are changing every month and hormonal changes are related to the entire body,” Cohen said. “The thyroid gland is a hormonal gland as well and the whole endocrine/hormone system all works together. ”

One encouraging factor, Cohen said, is that when the disease appears in younger people, it often comes with a better overall prognosis.

In the U.S., the ATA estimates that, in 2021, about 44,000 people received a new diagnosis of thyroid cancer, compared with over 280,000 with breast cancer and over 150,000 with colon cancer. About 2,000 patients die of thyroid cancer each year.

The more common types — papillary and follicular — have a five-year survival rate of over 98%. Follicular can be more difficult to treat depending on how far it’s spread to the bones and organs.

Some consider thyroid cancer one of the “good” cancers to have, relatively speaking, but even so, cancer is cancer and it still needs to be addressed, monitored and managed.

“Even when prognosis is excellent, patients need surgery, lifelong thyroid hormone replacement, surveillance, possible radioactive iodine treatment, and may live with anxiety about recurrence,” Sinha said.

There are also uncommon types of thyroid cancer such as undifferentiated or anaplastic thyroid cancer, which can be highly aggressive and associated with high mortality rates, Sehgal said.

The key message the cancer specialists we spoke with want to emphasize is the importance of staying informed and aware without slipping into panic or alarm.

“Thyroid nodules are common, and most are benign,” Sinha said. “However, a persistent neck lump, new hoarseness, difficulty swallowing, or an enlarging lymph node should be evaluated. Early evaluation with ultrasound and biopsy, when appropriate, can lead to timely diagnosis and excellent outcomes.”