RESEARCH ARTICLE
Bi Lateral Vocal Cord Paralysis Post Thyroidectomy Causing Total Airway Obstruction: Case Report
Surbhi D. Mundada*, Kundan S. Gosavi, Naveed J. Khan
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 5
First Page: 35
Last Page: 36
Publisher ID: TOATJ-5-35
DOI: 10.2174/1874321801105010035
Article History:
Received Date: 18/04/2011Revision Received Date: 23/06/2011
Acceptance Date: 08/07/2011
Electronic publication date: 26/8/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Thyroid surgery in recent years is generally considered quite safe. Better preoperative preparation and proper surgical techniques of thyroidectomy have minimized complications to less than 2-3%. Bilateral recurrent nerve palsy is the rarest of all complications, with a reported incidence varying between 0.4% to 14%, but can be potentially fatal if missed [1, 2]. We report a case in which the patient experienced life threatening stridor and severe dyspnoea requiring re-intubation few minutes after extubation.