Thyroid Gland Surgery And Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve (RLN) Injury

Recurrent laryngeal nerve(RLN)injury is the common complication of thyroid gland surgery.The rate of RLN injury is 2%~8.2% domestic and 0.2%~4.8% abroad. The problem surgical doctors always working for is how to avoid RLN injury utmost,because the symptom of which is evident,treatment is troublesome, prognosis is unfavourable, consequence is serious and even leads to medical disputes. The investigating progression of preventing RLN injury is reviewed. The main content includes:(1)The recognition of RLN applied anatomy;(2) The characteristic of RLN injury in thyroid gland surgery;(3)The prevention of RLN injury;(4)The affirmation and treatment of RLN injury in thyroid gland surgery.The indication,method and technique of RLN exposure and unexposed method in thyroidectomy are intensively reviewed.As highly paying attention to RLN injury,deeply studying and constantly technique improving in thyroidectomy,we believe that the rate of RLN injury will reduce furtherly in the future.With the application of microsurgical technique,the effect of treatment and prognosis will improve obviously even if RLN injury occurs once in a while.