Your surgeon may recommend that you consider thyroid surgery for 4 main reasons:
- You have a nodule that might be thyroid cancer.
- You have a diagnosis of thyroid cancer.
- You have a nodule or goiter that is causing local symptoms – compression of the trachea, difficulty swallowing or a visible or unsightly mass.
- You have a nodule or goiter that is causing symptoms due to the production and release of excess thyroid hormone – either a toxic nodule, a toxic multinodular goiter or Grave’s disease
The extent of your thyroid surgery should be discussed by you and your thyroid surgeon and can generally be classified as a partial thyroidectomy or a total thyroidectomy.
Thyroid surgery should be done by a surgeon with special training in this. Our head and neck surgeons have extensive experience and do multiple complex thyroid operations every year making them highly skilled to help with your thyroid problems. They manage cases along with endocrinologists and other thyroid surgeons in a multidisciplinary manner.