ObjectiveTo understand the follow-up needs of postoperative patients with thyroid cancer and analyze its influencing factors, so as to provide a reference for the establishment of a follow-up management system for patients with thyroid cancer.MethodsConvenience sampling was used to conduct a questionnaire survey on the follow-up need, recovery, anxiety, and stress of patients after thyroid cancer surgery in 2 tertiary A hospitals from March to April in 2020. The self-designed follow-up needs questionnaire, the Quality of Recovery Questionnaire 15 (QoR-15), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-4) were scored. The higher score, the higher need, the better recovery, and the more serious anxiety and stress.ResultsIn this study, 382 questionnaires were distributed, which of 351 were returned and of 349 were valid, the valid callback rate was 99.4% (349/351). ① Follow-up needs. Follow-up form: Online platform was the preferred follow-up method (72.2%), the most patients hoped that the follow-up would be conducted by a doctor (82.5%) and hoped to start the follow-up at 1 month after the operation (67.6%) and in the afternoon (50.7%), the duration of each follow-up was 10–15 min (47.3%), and accepted the follow-up frequency of 1 times per month (41.3%) and the lifetime follow-up (69.9%). Needs degree of follow-up contents: There were 13 follow-up items requiring more than 80% of patients. The top 5 items with the higher follow-up needs score were the question on test results, returning visit guidance, knowledges of metastasis and recurrence, medication guidance, and issuance of inspection orders, and their scores were 4.78±0.47, 4.70±0.51, 4.70±0.57, 4.65±0.59, 4.57±0.64, respectively. The results of multiple linear regression analysis were found that the age (young), marital status (unmarried), medical payment method (with medical insurance), and postoperative interval (<1 month) were closely related to the follow-up needs score (P<0.05). ② Recovery, anxiety, and stress statuses: The total QoR-15 score of patients was 79.87±29.95, which was positively correlated with the total score of follow-up needs (72.93±8.52, r=0.131, P=0.014). No significant correlation was found between the total score of GAD-7 (4.77±3.59) or PSS-4 (6.51±3.10) and the total score of follow-up needs (r=0.068, P=0.207; r=0.008, P=0.881).ConclusionsYoung, unmarried, medically insured, and early postoperative patients with thyroid cancer have higher follow-up needs. Patients with better recovery after surgery have a higher follow-up needs. Medical staff should pay attention to follow-up services after discharge, rationally arrange content, frequency, and time period of follow-up according to follow-up needs of patients, so as to improve quality of medical services.