title: Current surgical status of thyroid diseases.
abstract: Thyroid nodules are a common clinical problem for surgeons. The clinical importance of nodules is the need to exclude thyroid cancer, which occurs in 5%-15% of patients. If fine needle aspiration cytology is positive, or suspicious for malignancy, surgery is recommended. During the past decade, with the tendency to develop smaller incisions, an endoscopic approach has been applied to thyroid surgery, called minimally invasive video-assisted thyroidectomy. This approach was immediately followed by other minimally invasive or scarless neck techniques, such as the breast approach, axillary-breast approach, and robot-assisted method. All these techniques follow the same principles of surgery and oncology. This review presents the current surgical management of the thyroid gland, including the surgical techniques and compares them by describing benefits and drawbacks of each one.
authors.affiliation: First Surgery Department, University General Hospital of Alexandroupolis, Democritus University of Alexandroupolis, Greece.
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Touzopoulos
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Karanikas
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zarogoulidis
authors.forename: Alexandros
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mitrakas
authors.forename: Konstantinos
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Porpodis
authors.forename: Nikolaos
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Katsikogiannis
authors.forename: Vasilis
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Zervas
authors.forename: Ioannis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kouroumichakis
authors.forename: Theodoros C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Constantinidis
authors.forename: Dimitrios
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mikroulis
authors.forename: Konstantinos E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Tsimogiannis