Thyroidectomy

Larynx

Surgery

Head and neck

Total thyroidectomy

Recurrent laryngeal nerve

Internal medicine

Paralysis

Medicine

Goiter

Superior laryngeal nerve

Recurrent nerve

General surgery

Thyroid

Head & Neck

“I have noticed in operations of this kind, which I have seen performed by others upon the living, and in a number of excisions, which I have myself performed on the dead body, that most of the difficulty in the separation of the tumor has occurred in the region of these ligaments…. This difficulty, I believe, to be a very frequent source of that accident, which so commonly occurs in removal of goiter, I mean division of the recurrent laryngeal nerve.” Sir James Berry (1887)

Surgical management of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in thyroidectomy: American Head and Neck Society Consensus Statement