The estimation of the thyroid volume before surgery—an important prerequisite for minimally invasive thyroidectomy

Abstract

We demonstrated that using a linear model, it is possible to predict from US the PS-TV with high accuracy. In fact, the mean predicted TV perfectly matched the mean PS-TV in all cases. In particular, the percentage of cases in which the predicted TV perfectly matched the PS-TV increases from 23%, estimated by US, to 43%. Moreover, the percentage of TV underestimation was reduced from 77% to 19%, as well as the range of the disagreement from up to 200% to 80%. This study shows that two-dimensional US can provide the accurate estimation of thyroid volume but that it can be improved by a mathematical model. This may contribute to a more appropriate surgical management of thyroid diseases.

US not bright but right method of thyroid volume estimation even in large and substernal extended goitres. Comparison of US and three methods of CT thyroid evaluation – prospective study

“…Quoting from Nygaard et al ., many authors claim that in substernal goitres CT is a more accurate method than US . We would like to emphasize that in this work, only in 6 patients, a substernal goitre localization was described, but no correlation between the results obtained in patients with and without substernal extension was calculated .…”

Factors influencing the length of the incision and the operating time for total thyroidectomy

“…All operations were performed by the same medium-high volume team according to Ho [9], with a flow of approximately 100 total thyroidectomy/year. For each patient we recorded the body mass index (BMI), circumference of the neck (NC), distance between the suprasternal notch and thyroid cartilage (STD), volume of the thyroid gland (VT) as measured by ultrasound according to Ruggieri [10], length of the incision (LI), as well as the clinical and pathological diagnoses. The sample was composed by 77 female and 22 male patients, with a mean value ± s.d.…”

Is minimally invasive surgery appropriate for small differentiated thyroid carcinomas?

“…The specifi c preoperative indication for minimally invasive thyroidectomy was a cytologically suspected nodule not exceeding 20 mm in maximum diameter (cT1 according to UICC 2002), the absence of echographically enlarged lymph nodes in the neck, a thyroid volume up to 25 ml (19.5 ± 4.9 ml) and no previous neck surgery or irradiation ( Table 1). All patients underwent preoperative hormonal assessment, laryngoscopy, ultrasound evaluation of thyroid gland volume, [23][24][25] and fi ne-needle aspiration cytology. The preoperative cytologic diagnoses were PTC in 8 patients, suspicion of a follicular variant of PTC in 16, and a follicular lesion in 6.…”