Impact of modern technologies on quality of thyroid surgery

Excerpt

There exists no uniform definition of “conventional” vs “modern” thyroid surgery, and moreover, there are only few studies analyzing the efficacy of and outcome after thyroid surgery comparing conventional technique with “modern” types of thyroidectomy. The introduction of new technologies in thyroid surgery during the last decade, such as intraoperative monitoring of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, minimally invasive surgery, preparation and resection with harmonic scalpel, vessel dissection without ligatures, and intraoperative parathyroid hormone measurement, has led to several questions regarding the indication to and application of these methods: How to use? What about costs? What about patient selection and allocation? What about quality of surgery in terms of patient comfort and postoperative outcome? By applying new technologies, does the surgeon give up his key role as the most important factor of surgically related morbidity? Do new technologies such as intraoperative neuromonitoring and quick parathyroid hormone (PTH) allow to predict more precisely postoperative nerve and parathyroid function, respectively? Do these methods allow to predict the length of postoperative hospital stay? To analyze these questions, the first International Symposium on Modern Technologies in Thyroid Surgery, held in Halle from February 10 to 11, 2006, will focus on the following areas of quality assessment in thyroid surgery: (1) prevention of recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis, (2) prevention of bleeding and hypocalcemia, and (3) improvement of perioperative life quality by minimally invasive procedures. …