Visualizing Illness : Making of Non-symptomatic Thyroid Cancer Patients

• In Event: Visual (In)Sensibilities I

Abstract

This paper scrutinizes the medical paradigm of standardization and evidence-based practice, claiming that the newly developed system to “sense” and diagnose thyroid cancer with an ultrasonographic device is one aspect of an ultrasound-based professional milieu built within the Korean medical society. Doctors have approved aggressive medical intervention to verify the risks of diseases at earlier stages. In the case of thyroid cancer, ultrasound, which is described as “a window to body”, has become one of the most important devices for screening, diagnosis, and surgical practice. Drawing on the interviews with radiologists and surgeons as well as other medical researches in ultrasound image of malignant thyroid nodules, I demonstrate how ultrasonography has shaped the knowledge of thyroid cancer and the characteristics of thyroid cancer patients. I also follow the trajectory of medical professionals’ attempt to produce a standardized criteria of ultrasound image, TIRADS(Thyroid Image Reporting and Data System), to verify the malignancy of thyroid nodules and strengthen the basis of evidence-based medicine. Consequently, ultrasonography was able to gain its authority and credibility in discovering the non-symptomatic thyroid cancer. This study will contribute to the recent STS scholarship of visual representation in medicine; how medical devices shift the boundary between the normal and the pathological, how beliefs in medical images are built and collide with different perspectives and paradigms on health risks.

Author

• Kim HeeWon, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)