Preface to the series on “Improved Quality of Life after Thyroid Surgery”
The advancements that have been made in thyroid surgery within the past decade have created opportunity and demonstrated improvement in quality of endocrine surgical care for our patients. Thyroid surgery has become more than the operation itself; it has come to include a thoughtful and directed perioperative treatment planning, as well as transformed the operative management for our patients. In line with improved quality of surgical care, quality of life has become an important post-operative goal for many patients. Not only have new surgical techniques like minimally invasive and scarless thyroid surgery allowed for improvement in cosmesis, but non-operative approaches to thyroid nodules such as radiofrequency ablation has enabled patients to preserve their native thyroid function. The aim and scope of this special series is to discuss the importance of improved quality of life after surgical care for our patients. We explore improved quality of life with regards to laryngeal function which impact voice, swallow and everything in between. We discuss thyroid hormone supplementation, calcium supplementation and the impact it has on overall health of the patient after surgery. Finally, we also discuss what it means to be a thyroid surgical patient, from support groups to improved communication and education as well as considerations of preoperative decision-making aid. The role of molecular marker testing for indeterminate thyroid nodules and the impact it has on quality of life for patients is a novel topic of its own. This special series includes those excellent topics for discussion, all of which we hope to inform and educate the reader and the thyroid surgical enthusiast on the importance of quality life and how to achieve that after thyroid surgery.
Acknowledgments
Funding: None.
Footnote
Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Annals of Thyroid for the series “Improved Quality of Life after Thyroid Surgery”. The article did not undergo external peer review.
Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://aot.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/aot-2023-01/coif). The series “Improved Quality of Life after Thyroid Surgery” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. VKD served as the unpaid Guest Editor of the series and serves as an unpaid editorial board member of Annals of Thyroid from July 2021 to June 2023. EC served as the unpaid Guest Editor of the series. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.
Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Cite this article as: Dhillon VK, Cottrill E. Preface to the series on “Improved Quality of Life after Thyroid Surgery”. Ann Thyroid 2023;8:6.
