The second World Congress on Thyroid Cancer was held from July 10 to July 14, 2013, in Toronto, Canada. Its purpose was to provide a platform for the multidisciplinary discussion on research, education, and patient management of thyroid malignancy. Herein, we summarize the latest major trends and controversies within the field of thyroid oncology as discussed in the Congress including the use o...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The posterior thyroid tubercle, also known as ZT, is an important surgical landmark due to its close proximity to the recurrent laryngeal nerve. A recent case of ZT with a nodular configuration caused clinical concern but was shown on biopsy to be normal thyroid tissue. The purpose of this study was to review a series of CT neck studies to identify how often ZT-specifical...

Traditional measures of dysphonia vary in their reliability and in their correlations with perceptions of grade. Measurements of cepstral peak prominence (CPP) have been shown to correlate well with perceptions of breathiness. Because it is a measure of periodicity, CPP should also predict roughness. The ability of CPP and other acoustic measures to predict overall dysphonia and the subcategori...

Tuberculosis of the thyroid gland is a very rare condition. A case of a 47-year-old female with a history of a euthyroid multi-nodular goitre is presented. The patient developed hoarseness due to right recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis, confirmed with indirect laryngoscopy. On repeated ultrasound, volumetric progression of a dominant nodule in the inferior part of the right thyroid lobe was n...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS When the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) is injured, functional recovery may be limited by the number of axons that regrow across the site of injury, and by the proportions of these axons that reinnervate the antagonistic muscle (synkinesis). This process was investigated in a computer model of RLN recovery. STUDY DESIGN Computer simulation. METHODS The developed compu...

BACKGROUND The nonrecurrent inferior laryngeal nerve is an anomaly associated with the absence of the brachiocephalic artery (BCA) and the presence of arteria lusoria. METHODS The preoperative CT scans from 290 patients (9 nonrecurrent, 281 recurrent) were retrospectively reviewed. We identified the BCA or the arteria lusoria, and classified the relationship between the right subclavian arter...

A patient with sarcoidosis presented with hoarseness caused by mediastinal lymph nodes compressing the left recurrent laryngeal nerve. The response to corticosteroids was dramatic and complete.

INTRODUCTION Injury to cranial nerves IX, X, and XII is a known complication of laryngoscopy and intubation. Here we present a patient with concurrent hypoglossal and recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis after rhinoplasty. CASE REPORT The patient was a 27-year-old woman who was candidate for rhinoplastic surgery. The next morning after the operation, the patient complained of dysphonia and a s...

In laryngeal paralysis, the stiffness of the denervated vocal fold is decreased. This leads to deviant vibratory patterns involving 2 asymmetric vocal folds and results in abnormal vocal quality. Follow-up studies of medialization thyroplasty patients have noted that decrement in vocal quality after medialization is often because of continuing vocal fold atrophy. Vocal cord atrophy from denerva...

Nerve damage may occur in the pharyngolaryngeal region during general anesthesia. The most frequently injured nerves are the hypoglossal, lingual and recurrent laryngeal. These injuries may arise in association with several factors, such as laryngoscopy, endotracheal intubation and tube insertion, cuff pressure, mask ventilation, the triple airway maneuver, the oropharyngeal airway, manner of i...