Sunday 7 August 2011

Thyroid Operations - How many should a surgeon undertake per year?

There has long been a debate in the medical community about how many operations a surgeon should do each year.

Thyroid surgery is rapidly becoming a specialist operation - this is a good thing as data from the British Association of Endocrine and Thyroid surgeons has clearly demonstrated that outcomes are better from surgeons undertaking greater numbers of thyroid operations.

In particular - length of stay in hospital and risk of needing calcium tablets after surgery are both reduced.

The British Association held a landmark vote last year which said that surgeons should perform more than 25 thyroid operations a year in order to maintain skills and be considered for revalidation (relicensing) in the future.

There are however considerable numbers of surgeons in the UK who are not members of the Association and undertake few operations.

Your surgeon should be able to tell you:

1. How many operations they perform a year on thyroids

2. Figures relating to risk of hypocalcaemia post thyroidectomy (the best will be around 5-10%)

3. Risk of injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve in their hands

4. Average length of stay and number of daycase operations they perform


Daycase surgery is a good marker in my view as if a patient is fit, alert, pain free and keen to leave the same day it is a good indicator of a successful operation. If surgeons are unable to achieve discharge on the same day you should question why not.

www.thyroidsurgeon.org.uk

www.bucksendocrine.com

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for sharing this article about thyroid operations.It is very helpful to me. I know the thyroid diseases can affect different aspects of people and cause serious problem. Every year many people undergo the operation in hospital in Singapore.I hope the effective treatment can help them.

    ReplyDelete