Analysis of Risk Factors for Phonation Disorders After Thyroid Surgery

Overview

Journal Biomedicines

Specialty Biomedical Engineering

Date 2022 Sep 23

PMID 36140379

Authors

Mateusz Glod

Dominik Marciniak

Krzysztof Kaliszewski

Krzysztof Sutkowski

Jerzy Rudnicki

Marek Bolanowski

Beata Wojtczak

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Phonation disorders after thyroidectomy are among the most common complications and occur as a result of recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) injury. The multivariate analysis of risk factors for phonation disorders after thyroidectomy was assessed. A group of 830 patients with 1500 RLNs at risk of injury during thyroidectomy were analyzed retrospectively. The impact of the method of RLN identification, age, sex, BMI, kind of thyroid surgery, pathology, surgeon's experience and thyroid volume on vocal cord paralysis was analyzed. We found that the retrosternal goiter and the volume above 100 mL were the most important risk factors for both transient and permanent paralysis. Thyroid cancer had a statistically significant impact on the increase in permanent paralysis, while this indication had practically no impact on transient paralysis. Among patients over 65 years with obesity, the probability of transient complications approximately doubled, with no effect on the permanent paralysis. Men were approximately 1.7 times more likely to develop any type of phonation disorder. Secondary operations more than doubled the risk of transient and permanent vocal cord paralysis. Thyroidectomy with only visual RLN identification was associated with a risk of both transient and permanent vocal cord paralysis almost two times higher, compared to neuromonitoring.

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