Is sutureless thyroid surgery safe in the hands of surgical trainees. A single centre retrospective study

BACKGROUND: The safety and efficacy of sutureless thyroid surgery have been confirmed in many series. Equally, surgical expertise has been shown to influence postoperative outcome. This study aimed at investigating the safety of sutureless thyroid surgery in the hands of surgical trainees and to find out if this technique could be safely integrated into endocrine surgical training programs. METHODS: A single center retrospective comparison of the outcome of surgeries performed by experienced surgical attendings and trainees was performed. The LigaSure Precise was used in all cases. RESULTS: Two hundred and eight patients were included. The trainee group comprised of 61 cases managed by surgical trainees. Surgery was performed by surgical attendings in 147 cases (consultant group). The incidences of transient and permanent hypocalcaemia were 20.7 and 0.9 % respectively, the corresponding values for recurrent nerve injury were 6.3 and 0.9 %. Postoperative bleeding occurred in 3.4 %. There was no difference amongst both groups with regard to postoperative outcome (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: While sutureless thyroid surgery was safely performed by surgical trainees without relevant increase in perioperative complications in our department, further larger scale studies would be needed to confirm this would be the case more widely.