On causes and preventive measures of recurrent laryngeal nerve injury during endoscopic thyroidectomy:Report of 3 cases / 中国微创外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore causes and preventive measures of recurrent laryngeal nerve injury during endoscopic thyroidectomy.Methods Clinical data of 3 cases of recurrent laryngeal nerve injury from 101 cases of endoscopic thyroidectomy in this hospital from January 2002 to July 2006 were retrospectively analyzed and summarized.Results There were 3 cases of hoarseness occurred at 24 h after operation.Under indirect laryngoscopy,the unilateral vocal cord was found immobile.The reasons leading to the injury included thermal burn by ultrasound knife in 2 cases and edema compression in 1 case.The injury was transient recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis.The symptoms subsided spontaneously 3 months after operation in 2 cases and 20 days after operation in 1 case,respectively.Conclusions The recurrent laryngeal nerve injury is usually correlated with unskillful use of ultrasound knife.The improvement of surgeon's technique is crucial to reduce the incidence of this complication.