The effects of thyroidectomy techniques on the rate of recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis (Pre-liminary study)

Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve injury still remains the major problem in thyroid gland surgery and is influenced both by morphology and function of the goitre and essentially by the resection technique. Therefore, the modifications have been improved in thyroidectomy technique. Fifty-seven goitre patients who underwent bilateral subtotal thyroidectomywere taken into the study in Medicine Faculty of Vie-zancii Yil University, Department of General Sur-gery from October 1994 and March 1996.Recurrent laryngeal nerves were seen in 27 patients and in-ferior thyroid ateries were tied, although int-racapsular thyrodiectorny was performed in 30 pa-tients. The vocal cord examination with indirect laryngoscopy was carried out before the operation and postoperatively. The laryngeal nerve injury was established in 1. grog both bilateral (one patient-3.7%) and unilateral (one patient-3.7%), althought it was established in 2. group unilateral only in one patient (3.3%). Except one patient who was de-termined bilateral nerve inury, others recovered. In conclusion of our preliminary study, it has been seen that decreased the laryngeal nerve injury of int-racapsular technique.