Results following surgical treatment of hyperthyroidism

In the years 1965-1978 1,222 patients with different types of thyrotoxicosis underwent surgical treatment at the 1st Department of Surgery, University of Vienna. Wherever possible a sparing selective surgical approach was considered preferable: autonomous adenoma (45%) enucleation resection or subtotal uni-lateral resection; multinodular toxic goiter (36%) and Graves disease (5%) uni- or bilateral subtotal resection. The remaining 5% were rather rare types of goiter (recurrent goiter, thyroiditis, adenocarcinoma). Overall mortality due was 0.7%. One-hundred and seven patients (8.76%) were over 70 years old at the time of the operation. Post-operative death occurred in the group of patients with toxic adenomas (2.7%). Four-hundred and ninety-five patients were followed up from 3-13 years postoperatively: the rate of recurrent thyrotoxicosis was 4.4%, 4.8% of the patients with hypothyroidism. In this paper the significance of the rapid effect of surgery in cases of hyperthyroidism is discussed and the results are compared with findings in other studies.