This paper analyzes the objective and subjective reasons of conserving surgeries in follicular thyroid carcinoma in patients who were children or adolescents at the time of the Chernobyl accident. It has been established that in the period from 1996 to 2012 there were operated 88 such patients, and in the majority of cases (72.7 %) surgeons carried out conserving surgeries. The main reason for this treatment — the inability to establish the presence of follicular carcinoma in the pre- or intraoperative stages. Despite the fact that all patients were at high risk of thyroid cancer, 44 % of patients flatly refused to perform radical reoperation after the pathologist diagnosed follicular carcinoma. Important factors influencing the patient’s decision to carry out a final thyroidectomy were the size of the tumor and its invasiveness. Patients with minimally invasive, small size (less than 10 mm) follicular thyroid carcinomas refused surgical reintervention most often.