Effectiveness of Intraoperative Neuromonitoring According to the Mechanism of Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve Injury During Thyroid Surgery / 대한두경부종양학회지

ABSTRACT

Visual identification of recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) is considered as a gold standard of RLN preservation during thyroid surgery. Intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM) is classified into the intermittent type and continuous type and helps surgeons identify the functional integrity of RLN and predict the postoperative vocal cord function. RLN injury during thyroid surgery is associated with tumor factors and surgeon factors. Tumor factors mean such as direct tumor invasion, adhesion of RLN to the tumor, and compression by a large thyroid tumor. Surgeon factors include nerve transection, stretching, thermal injury, and ligation injury. A recent meta-analysis reported that the IONM could reduce the RLN injury. Considering various nerve injury mechanism, we suggest that using both I-ONM and C-IONM together is more effective method in preventing nerve damage than using I-IONM alone.