Postoperative Complications of Thyroid Surgery

INTRODUCTIONThe purpose of this study was to investigate the postoperative complications of thyroid surgery.METHODSThe medical records of 206 consecutive patients who underwent thyroid surgery between April 2008 and February 2015 at our hospital were reviewed. The data of 166 patients with thyroid carcinoma (162 papillary, 1 follicular, 2 poorly differentiated, 1 anaplastic), 27 patients with benign follicular nodule, 7 patients with hyperthyroidism (6 Graves’ disease, 1 Plummer’s disease), and 3 patients with chronic thyroiditis were analyzed. Mainly, the incidences of recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) palsy, postoperative hemorrhage and hypoparathyroidism were evaluated.RESULTSPermanent RLN palsy occurred in 3 patients (1.5%); one of these 3 patients had a prior history of thyroid surgery, and the operator failed to identify the RLN in the severely scarred tissues. In another, with an extra-laryngeal RLN branch, the surgeon mistook the posterior branch as the main trunk of the RLN. Transient RLN palsy occurred in 7 patients (3.4%). No patient developed RLN palsy after the introduction at our facility of non-continuous laryngeal nerve monitoring during the operation.Four patients (1.9%) developed postoperative hemorrhage necessitating reoperation; of these 4 patients, 3 had large follicular nodules.Permanent hypoparathyroidism occurred in 3 of the 47 patients (6.4%) who underwent total thyroidectomy.CONCLUSIONSWe reconfirmed the frequency of postoperative complications following thyroid surgery at our facility, and found them comparable to the results reported from other facilities.