Robotic thyroid surgery: our experience with the infraclavicular approach
Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 27, 2026
Transoral Robotic Total Thyroidectomy and Bilateral Central Regional Lymph Node Dissection for Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma
Published on: September 15, 2023
Benjamin Lallemant1, Guillaume Chambon, Damien Rupp
1Service d'ORL et Chirurgie maxillo-faciale, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nîmes, Nîmes, France. Benjamin.lallemant@chu-nimes.fr
Background:
Robot-assisted endoscopic transaxillary thyroidectomy is an emerging surgical technique. Despite promising results it presents some limitations and remains controversial in terms of usefulness and validity. We developed an alternative robotic technique using a gasless infraclavicular approach.
Methods:
We tested this approach using cadaveric dissection, then we performed the technique on a series of 21 patients from October 2009 to July 2010.
Results:
Sixteen patients underwent total thyroidectomy and 5 patients underwent lobectomies. Mean total operative time was 197 minutes. We observed postoperative complications in 4 patients. Pathologic diagnoses included: benign follicular adenoma (19 patients) and single papillary carcinoma <1 cm in diameter pT1a (2 patients).
Conclusions:
The infraclavicular approach for robotic thyroidectomy is feasible, but is not safe enough to be recommended, based on our experience and on the technical difficulties encountered. The use of 2 robotic arms instead of 3 is a major limitation for this technique.
