Minimally invasive surgery using mini anterior incision for thyroid diseases: a prospective cohort study

Minimally invasive surgical techniques have attracted interest in all surgical specialties since 1980. The thyroidectomy technique requires meticulous surgical dissection, absolute hemostasis, en bloc tumor resection and adequate visualization of the operative field, all of which can be accomplished with minimally invasive techniques.

The study group comprised all patients undergoing MITS from its introduction in 2010 until July 2012. All data were prospectively recorded in the Elbistan Hospital and Suleyman Demirel University in Turkey. This study was designed to demonstrate our experience with mini-incision-technique in thyroidectomy.

Over the 2-year period, 37 patients underwent bilateral MITS procedures. The procedure made with a small (2.5 cm) anterior incision made above the isthmus. The final diagnoses were benign multinodular goitre (37%), follicular adenoma (28%) incidental carcinoma (11%), Hashimoto's thyroiditis (15%), Hurtle cell adenoma (5%), subacute thyroiditis (3%), residual thyroid-non carcinoma (2%), simple cyst (1%), diffuse hyperplasia (1%) and other (1%). Of the carcinomas, 80% were papillary thyroid cancer, 13% were follicular, and the remaining 7% were Hurtle cell carcinomas. We dont need to extend our incision in any cases. Two patients had temporary recurrent laryngeal nevre paresis and one patient had temporary hypocalcemia.

It is not easy to demonstrate the advantages of MIT over conventional and video-assisted surgery. The main complications, such as nerve injury, hypoparathyroidism, or hemorrhage, are the same as in other surgical approaches. MIT has demonstrated advantages over conventional open approaches for both hemi- and total thyroidectomy and the benefits do not depend on the open or video-assisted approach. The anterior mini-incision approach can be performed with an operative time and postoperative complication profile equivalent to conventional thyroidectomy while providing excellent cosmesis with a 2 cm scar in both total thyroidectomy and lobectomies.