Is surgery necessary for thyroid nodules to heal?

For laymen like us, especially those who have never had thyroid nodules, we would be very panicked if we suddenly found an abnormal protrusion in our thyroid gland. Thyroid nodules are a very common disease. Even ordinary people can find thyroid nodules in 20% to 70% of cases if they undergo ultrasound examination. So is surgery necessary for thyroid nodules?

1. Thyroid nodule surgery requires caution

Thyroid nodule is actually a relatively general term. Thyroid cancer, thyroid adenoma, nodular thyroid, etc. are all called thyroid nodules before their nature is clarified. Among them, only thyroid cancer is a malignant disease.

Generally, when a thyroid nodule is discovered, people's first reaction is: "Is it cancer?" "Will it metastasize?" Many patients, fearing malignancy, undergo surgery, only to find out after surgery that it is just an adenoma or nodular thyroid gland, or even just thyroiditis. Although the surgery is not serious, the complications after the surgery are a lifelong problem for many people.

2. Side Effects of Surgery

1. Because certain blood vessels must be cut during thyroid surgery, the blood supply to the parathyroid glands is affected, resulting in numbness in the hands and feet.

2. In order to avoid damaging the recurrent laryngeal nerve during thyroid surgery, it is often dissected, which may cause edema of the recurrent laryngeal nerve or affect its blood supply, so that the patient may have difficulty speaking after the operation.

3. Thyroid surgery requires a large separation of the skin flaps above and below the incision, which can easily cause edema of the tissues around the incision.

4. If the surgical resection is not thorough, the remaining thyroid tissue and micronodules will proliferate rapidly after the operation, and the postoperative inhibitory therapy of thyroid hormone preparations has limited effect on the remaining diseased tissue, so the postoperative recurrence rate is high.

5. After thyroid surgery, swallowing may cause a pulling sensation or even coughing, which is related to the normal scar contraction reaction after thyroid nodule surgery.