Overview of Thyroid Surgery Complications

INTRODUCTION: The most obvious indication for thyroid surgery is malignancy, but other indications are also not rare. As with any other surgical procedure, those surgeries also carry risks which can be classified as minor or major. DISCUSSION: In this overview, we present minor (seroma, scarring) and major complications of thyroid surgery (recurrent nerve injury, hypoparathyroidism, and bleeding). We discuss the possibilities of prevention and treatment of each of those complications. CONCLUSION: In recent years, thyroid surgery is becoming safer due to the development of new surgical, hemostatic, and other techniques such as intraoperative monitoring of the recurrent laryngeal nerve and parathyroid gland detection.