Compartment Pressure Monitoring After Thyroid Surgery: A Possible Method to Detect a Rebleeding: Reply

Excerpt

We would like to thank Sabaretnam Mayilvaganan and Sapana Bothra for their interest in our study [1] and their kind letter. First, we agree with the comment that energy-based surgical devices, including electrotome, the Harmonic scalpel (Ethicon, Endosurgery, Norderstedt, Germany), and LigaSure™ (Medtronic, Minneapolis, USA), have been widely applied in thyroid surgery [2]. We routinely used the traditional tie and cut method in combination with bipolar electrocautery in thyroid surgery. We therefore did not use any additional surgical devices in our clinical trial in order to reduce potential bias. For the same reason, we did not use any hemostatic agents, although they are widespread [3]. Their effectiveness and safety has not been fully proven yet, and in addition it remains unclear, whether some of the available products offer any advantage to prevent bleeding complications in certain situations [3]. …