What is the traditional way of removing the thyroid?
Dr. Terris: The conventional way of removing your thyroid is to make a big, what used to be called the necklace incision, low in the neck. Nowadays, it’s evolved so we use ever smaller incisions. The latest is to move the incisions away from the neck because the neck is a very public location. It began by moving it somewhere under the arm. Explain that and how it has evolved. Dr. Terris: There have been a number of techniques that have evolved to move the incision away from the neck including going on the chest wall, coming under the armpit and, more recently, employing the robot to facilitate these remote access procedures. What we have begun doing just recently here at the Medical College of Georgia is to move the incision behind the ear, that way the area of the dissection is reduced compared to coming from the armpit, which has emerged as one of the more common ways of getting to the thyroid gland. When you come from the armpit, it’s a pretty long dissection to get to where the thy
