artial Thyroidectomy: Illustrated Reflections or Surgical Residents

his pictorial article has been written by an attending endocrine urgeon and illustrated by a surgical resident to provide a simlistic platform for surgical residents to approach the anatomial knowledge and technical knowledge needed for perforance of a partial or total thyroidectomy. This short article will ot replace the need for detailed study of thyroid anatomy efore performing thyroid surgery for resident surgeons but will opefully provide a helpful starting point for the resident to tart a study of the anatomy and techniques needed to perform thyroidectomy. Thyroid surgery provides an excellent example of an operaion in which the surgical resident needs to not only understand ompletely the detailed preoperative evaluation algorithms eeded but also needs to integrate this knowledge with intricate natomic detail and surgical technical skill. Residents will find hat proper tying techniques will be absolutely necessary for this peration; the small thyroidal vessels do not allow for undue ension created by the inexperienced knot tier; thus finesse in not tying is important. Properly prepared residents will find hyroid surgery not only to be gratifying in multiple levels but ill also find that thyroid surgery will push their technical skills nd knowledge to its limit. Details of the thyroidal vascular and ertinent neuroanatomical natural variants for the external ranch of the superior laryngeal nerve, recurrent laryngeal erve, and thyroidal vessels are not addressed in this monoraph but should be separately studied. Of course, every attendng surgeon will have small differences in their preferences, and hese should be incorporated into the resident’s repertoire, hich allows the resident to come up with their unique way of oing things when they move onto becoming an independent urgeon.