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The teacher chose her as an example to explain how to examine the thyroid
A Gabriella BarbozaBrazilian student of MedicineGoing to class saved his life. It was October 2020 when Barboza attended a class in which the teacher taught how to perform head and neck physical exams.
The doctor Daniel Lichtenhaler, her teacher, was demonstrating with the students when he noticed her and noticed something strange. “The first student used as an example had a small thyroid, which is normal. So I quickly I looked at the necks of other students and Gabriella’s caught my attention“says the doctor to BBC News.
Then, he asked the student to be the example person with whom he would explain how palpate the thyroid. While demonstrating the technique to her student, Lichtenhaler gave obvious signs of concern that unsettled her student: “I asked her if she had noticed anything different while feeling my neck, and she said, ‘There’s something there, check it out” Barboza tells the British media.
Quick diagnosis
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After the advice of his teacher, Barbosa underwent several medical tests that would end up determining that he suffered from a papillary thyroid carcinoma, the most common thyroid cancer. Thanks to the good eyesight of her teacher, the detection of the tumor was very fast and the student shared on social networks that, a few months later, managed to overcome cancer.
“If I hadn’t gone to class that day, maybe they wouldn’t have discovered the disease so soon. My diagnosis would have taken much longer and could have been more serious” has highlighted Gabriella on the BBC.