DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2013.v01i06.004

Pages: 673-676

The technique of thyroidectomy has been in evolution for many years. It is a fundamental principle of surgery that a structure must be identified clearly during the procedure in order to prevent its damage. The objective of the study was to evaluate our routine identification of the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) during thyroidectomy aiming to lessen the inadvertent injury of the recurrent laryngeal nerves during surgery. The study included a convenience sample, non probability total coverage multicentre hospital based descriptive prospective study (December 2009 to May 2012) including all adult patients managed by subtotal thyroidectomy after acceptance of the pre given informed consent. All operations were undertaken by the same surgical team. Data collected using a predesigned questionnaire. Data analysis was performed using SPSS version 15.0 for Windows. The study included 82 patients (69 (84.15%) females and 13(15.85%) males), with male to female ratio of 1:5.3. Their mean age was 42.8 years (SD ± 8.4 years). All were treated by subtotal thyroidectomy. The rate of identification of the RLN was 100% for all patients. The overall frequency of RLN injury was 1.2% seen in one patient. It was temporary injury. In conclusion, study proved that surgical exposure of the RLNs avoids the incidence of its damage.