McCall McPherson talks with a surgical expert about transoral thyroid surgery, which removes the thyroid through the mouth instead of the neck. Conventional thyroidectomy is safe and effective, but transoral avoids a visible scar. The expert explains the training required and how recovery compares.
Tell us about normal thyroid surgery, right? Like, tell us what that looks like, what the long term, kind of, even the aesthetic component of it is, and then compare to scarless thyroid surgery. And I think my question to you is, like, how does that even work?
Okay, we'll start with normal thyroid surgery, which is really good. Like, again, it's what made me fall in love with the field of thyroid and parathyroid surgery was that this is a very elegant surgery and you can. And patients almost always do super well. Sometimes we have to send them to you afterwards to help iron out the hormonal issues. But as far as safety and getting patients recovered, it's a pretty safe surgery. If you go to a surgeon who does lots of thyroid surgery, if we could do it without a scar, we would. You know what I mean? There's.
Like, there's no reason not.
To. About three months before I finished my training, this paper came out of, of Thailand, of all places, where there was. There was the. A surgeon who had done scarless thyroid surgery and published a few cases. And so I finished my training three months later and went to Thailand and learned from this surgeon, was able to come back and be the first group in the United States to do the scarless trans oral thyroid surgery. And I had patients who I will forever be grateful to who were like, yeah, let's try it. I. I mean, that takes a lot of courage to be like a patient. Be like, why? I walk into the room, I'm like, hey, I'm a brand new surgeon. I just was hanging out in Asia. They've got this idea, you want to do.
