INTRODUCTION Patient-safety monitoring based on health-outcome indicators can lead to misinterpretation of changes in case mix. This study aimed to compare the detection of indicator variations between crude and case-mix-adjusted control charts using data from thyroid surgeries. METHODS The study population included each patient who underwent thyroid surgery in a teaching hospital from Januar...

OBJECTIVE To determine the association between surgeons' experience and postoperative complications in thyroid surgery. DESIGN Prospective cross sectional multicentre study. SETTING High volume referral centres in five academic hospitals in France. PARTICIPANTS All patients who underwent a thyroidectomy undertaken by every surgeon in these hospitals from 1 April 2008 to 31 December 2009. ...

The second World Congress on Thyroid Cancer was held from July 10 to July 14, 2013, in Toronto, Canada. Its purpose was to provide a platform for the multidisciplinary discussion on research, education, and patient management of thyroid malignancy. Herein, we summarize the latest major trends and controversies within the field of thyroid oncology as discussed in the Congress including the use o...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The posterior thyroid tubercle, also known as ZT, is an important surgical landmark due to its close proximity to the recurrent laryngeal nerve. A recent case of ZT with a nodular configuration caused clinical concern but was shown on biopsy to be normal thyroid tissue. The purpose of this study was to review a series of CT neck studies to identify how often ZT-specifical...

Traditional measures of dysphonia vary in their reliability and in their correlations with perceptions of grade. Measurements of cepstral peak prominence (CPP) have been shown to correlate well with perceptions of breathiness. Because it is a measure of periodicity, CPP should also predict roughness. The ability of CPP and other acoustic measures to predict overall dysphonia and the subcategori...

OBJECT This retrospective study was designed to determine whether side of approach during instrumented, one- or two-level primary anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) affects the incidence of recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) injury diagnosed by observation of the vocal cords (OVC). METHODS Records of all patients who underwent one- or two-level instrumented primary ACDF (418 patients...

A case of a 50-year-old male who developed left recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy due to a bronchogenic cyst is presented. The bronchogenic cyst recurred following incomplete excision and multiple attempts at percutaneous aspiration. Recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy is an unusual complication of bronchogenic cysts. This case highlights the need for complete excision of these cysts and the lack of ...

Reidel thyroiditis is extremely rare and not only involves the thyroid gland but usually extends to neighboring structures in the neck. A rare complication of this disease is entrapment of the recurrent laryngeal nerve causing a vocal cord paralysis. In fact, to our knowledge, this is likely the only benign thyroid disease to cause such a paralysis. We present a case of a 57-year-old woman with...

We report an unusual case of bilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy caused by gross oesophageal distension due to achalasia.