ABSTRACT
Beginning with the awarding of the 1909 Nobel Prize for Medicine to Theodor Kocher for thyroid surgery, the legacy of innovation and progress in conventional open thyroidectomy has continued through the modern era [1]. However, conventional open thyroidectomy is performed through a cervical incision (6–8 cm) on the anterior neck. This procedure is always open and occasionally leaves a prominent scar on the anterior neck. Since thyroid disease usually occurs in women, and the incidence rate is increasing in young women, there is now greater consideration of the cosmetic aspect of thyroid surgery. This consideration, along with associated sequelae that affect patients postoperatively, including paresthesias, hypesthesias, voice changes, and dysphagia without discrete clinical findings, has become a problem to both patients and doctors and needs to be addressed [2].
