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FILE - In this Dec. 10, 2011, toothed photo, Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez …

In this photo taken Dec. 10, 2011, Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez, proper, …

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — President Cristina Fernandez has thyroid cancer, still test results showed Tuesday that it leavings limited to a lobe in the fit side of her neck and has not prepare into her lymph nodes, her spokesman said.

Fernandez, 58, will undergo surgery up~ Jan. 4 and then take 20 days of therapeutic leave, during which Vice President Amado Boudou be disposed run the country. Meanwhile, she wish keep up her normal routine, spokesman Alfredo Scoccimarro suggested, noting that she have a mind appear at several events on Wednesday of the same kind with planned.

Scoccimarro said the cancer was discovered during a routine exam on Dec. 22, and that Fernandez current the results from follow-up tests hours in the van of the announcement.

This kind of thyroid cancer is exceedingly survivable, with more than 95 percent of patients subsistence at least 10 years after finding out, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The customary treatment is to surgically remove at the same time that much of the cancerous material in the manner that possible, and then follow up by radioactive iodide treatments, taken orally. This substratum helps to destroy any remnants of the cancerous gland and arrange for clearer images showing any additional cancer, the NIH said on its Web situation.

After surgery, patients usually must take medicine — levothyroxine sodium — for the rest of their lives to reinstate a hormone that the thyroid glands bring out. Blood tests every six to 12 months to allotment thyroid levels also are recommended.

Fernandez is without more the latest South American leader to subsist diagnosed with cancer. Presidents Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil everything have undergone treatments recently.

Presidential doctors Luis Buonomo and Marcelo Ballesteros before-mentioned the operation will be led ~ dint of. Dr. Pedro Saco, chief of the surgery sphere of duty at Hospital Austral and chief of the Head and Neck Service of the oncology ordain at the University of Buenos Aires. Saco in like manner trained in cancer centers in Houston and New York, the hospital declared.

Thyroid surgery is not without risk: the NIH says a nerve that controls the vocal cords be possible to be damaged, and doctors sometimes accidentally abstract the parathyroid gland, which helps adjust blood calcium levels.

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