Remove the thyroid without leaving scars on the patient’s body. To the Gemelli Polyclinic This type of operation was carried out for the first time on a young patient. An innovative endoscopic procedure (an illuminated tube connected to a video camera and a screen) which allows the removal of the gland located under the Adam’s apple directly from inside the mouth, through small incisions made under the lower lip.
INSIGHTS
The operation at the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome
«There are over 1,500 thyroidectomy operations carried out every year at Gemelli – he recalls Marco Raffaelli, director of the Endocrine and Metabolic Surgery Unit of the Gemelli Irccs University Polyclinic Foundation and professor of General Surgery at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome campus – of these at least half for thyroid cancer, which can also arise in very young people.”
According to the specialist many young women would have one «certain reluctance to approach this type of operation, for fear that it could leave a visible scar on the neck». For this reason, Raffaelli continues to explain, «our offer has been enriched with procedures that do not leave visible scars, such as transaxillary robotic surgery, with the da Vinci robot. And it is in this wake that we have decided to expand our surgical offering with Toetva.”
Toetva: how the new procedure that leaves no scars works
The technical name is Toetva (trans-oral endoscopic thyroidectomy with vestibular approach) and is a procedure invented in Thailand, where neck scarring constitutes an important cultural stigma.
The operation is still performed in a few centers in Italy and around the world, has limited indications and requires careful patient selection. The procedure is carried out under general anesthesia. They practice three small incisions inside the mouthunder the lower lip, through which the instruments are introduced and we proceed by removing the thyroid from the mouth. Among the possible complications is damage to the mental nerve with loss of sensation in the chin.
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