PARALYSIS OF VOCAL CORDS FOLLOWING THYROIDECTOMY

Abstract

There are a significantly large number of individuals who develop vocal cord paralysis due to injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve at the time of thyroidectomy. One of us ( P. H. H. ) 1 has reported that unilateral paralysis occurs in 1.5 to 15% and bilateral paralysis in less than 1% of patients in whom thyroidectomy has been done. Feuz 2 reported a series of 250 patients examined carefully, before and after operation, with 7.6% incidence of organic paralysis due to the operation. In a series of 3,000 thyroidectomies, Lahey and Hoover 3 found that by routine dissection and demonstration of the recurrent laryngeal nerves in thyroid surgery he had lowered the incidence of nerve injuries in three years from 1.6 to 0.3%. In a series of 504 patients, Mulligan 4 reported that 32 patients, or 6.3%, incurred injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerves. The recurrent laryngeal nerve had been identified by