Complications of thyroid surgery: prevention and management

The essentials of thyroid surgery include intimate knowledge of thyroid gland anatomy, sound understanding of thyroid pathology and meticulous technique. While mortality due to thyroid surgery is rare, complications can result in debilitating sequelae. Thyroid surgeons need to understand and anticipate situations when these may occur, and actively take steps to prevent them, as treatment of these complications is often difficult and frustrating. Surgeons also need to maintain an audit of their own complication rates and convey these to patients instead of quoting data from published literature, which is biased towards high-volume specialized units rather than "real world data". This review addresses the common complications that occur during thyroid surgery and the issues therein.