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Complications in Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery

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Surgery of the Thyroid and Parathyroid Glands

Abstract

Mortality from thyroid and parathyroid surgery is virtually disregarded nowadays. During the eighteenth century, however, the mortality rate of thyroid surgery was as high as 40% from bleeding and sepsis. As a consequence, in 1850, the French Academy of Medicine recommended its routine use be abandoned, and many leading surgeons would not perform it. The greatest advance in thyroid surgery is to be credited to Theodor Kocher who first recognized the importance of antiseptic and aseptic handling, hemostasis, and precise operative technique. Within a decade, his overall operative mortality decreased from 15% to 2.4%. With the exclusion of complicated cases, in 1898, he reported a mortality rate of only 0.18%. Following Kocher’s principles, William Halsted, Charles Mayo, George Crile, and others contributed further to the development of thyroid surgery.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, Hammersmith Campus, Du Cane Road, London, W12 0HS, UK

    Andrea Frilling & Frank Weber M.D.

  2. Department of General Transplantation and Liver Surgery, Warsaw Medical University, Banacha 1A, P-02-097, Warsaw, Poland

    Oskar Kornasiewitcz M.D., Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Andrea Frilling
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  2. Frank Weber M.D.
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  3. Oskar Kornasiewitcz M.D., Ph.D.
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Frilling .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chairman, Department of Surgery, University Hospital Basel, Spitalstr. 21, Basel, 4031, Switzerland

    Daniel Oertli

  2. Yale-New Haven Hospital, Department of Surgery, Yale University School of Medicine, Cedar Street 330FMB 102, New Haven, CT, 06520-8062, USA

    Robert Udelsman

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Frilling, A., Weber, F., Kornasiewitcz, O. (2012). Complications in Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery. In: Oertli, D., Udelsman, R. (eds) Surgery of the Thyroid and Parathyroid Glands. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23459-0_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23459-0_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23458-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23459-0

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