The latest analysis of the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) 13 database (covering the period 1992–2012 in the USA) shows that the incidence rates of papillary thyroid cancer (PTC), specifically conventional PTC (CPTC) and follicular-variant PTC (FVPTC), significantly increased from 1992 to 2012 (P <0.001). Importantly, however, the analysis suggests that the increasing incidence of PTC might have plateaued in the last 2–3 years of the study.