[Surgical therapy for thyroid gland malignancies]

Surgical therapy for thyroid neoplasms is based on tumor histology and comprises stage-adapted procedures with a high degree of inter-individual variability. This can range from waiting and monitoring, to extensive multivisceral surgery. Grouping together histologically different types of malignancies leads to false assumptions when gauging the radicality of surgery necessary in each particular case. Surgical therapy requires not only an understanding of the biological behavior of the tumor and the risk that it or the therapy poses to the patient, but also knowledge of a wide surgical spectrum of limited and complex resection procedures in the neck and thorax region. The following recommendations are based primarily on the guidelines of the Surgical Working Group for Endocrinology of the German Society for General and Visceral Surgery as well as on the authors' own experience and, where indicated, the guidelines of other working groups.