Thyroidectomy Step by Step: Protecting the Voice Nerves and Parathyroid Glands During Surgery

The night before, most people do the same thing: they stand in front of the bathroom mirror, tilt their chin up, and try to picture a scar they have never seen on a neck they have looked at every day of their lives. Then they swallow, deliberately, and wonder what that will feel like next week.

The questions that follow are rarely about the gland itself. They are about the voice, because a thyroidectomy procedure takes place a few millimeters from the nerves that let you speak, and about calcium, because four glands smaller than lentils sit on the back of the thyroid and can be bruised in the process. Those two worries shape almost every decision a thyroid surgeon makes between the first cut and the last stitch.

This explainer walks through the operation in the order it actually happens, with the evidence on what protects the voice nerves and parathyroid glands, what recovery tends to look like, and which questions are worth asking before you sign the consent form.

What actually happens during a thyroidectomy procedure

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland that wraps around the front of the windpipe just below the voice box. It makes the hormones that set the pace of your metabolism. Removing it sounds dramatic, yet the operation itself is methodical and, in most hands, unhurried.

You are asleep under general anesthesia, lying with your neck gently extended. The surgeon makes a horizontal incision low in the neck, usually a few centimeters long and placed in a natural skin crease so it fades into the lines you already have. Beneath the skin lie thin strap muscles; these are parted along the midline rather than cut, which is one reason swallowing recovers quickly.

The gland is then freed lobe by lobe. Each lobe has its own blood supply, delivered by the superior and inferior thyroid arteries, and the surgeon seals these vessels close to the gland surface. Working near the gland, rather than farther out, keeps the blood supply to the parathyroid glands intact and keeps the instruments away from the nerves.

Once the lobe is mobilized, the surgeon searches for the recurrent laryngeal nerve, the fine white cord that runs upward toward the voice box, and for the parathyroid glands, and only then divides the last attachments to the windpipe. The tissue is sent to pathology. Patient resources from Cleveland Clinic describe the whole operation as taking roughly two to three hours, though a hemithyroidectomy, meaning removal of one lobe, is shorter and an operation with lymph node dissection is longer.

The wound is closed in layers with dissolvable stitches or fine surgical glue. Some surgeons leave a small drain for a day; many do not. You wake in recovery, often speaking within minutes, and that first sentence is one the team listens to carefully.

Total, hemi, or with neck dissection: which operation is being planned?

People say “thyroid surgery” as though it were one thing. It is at least three, and the differences matter for the risks you are weighing.

A hemithyroidectomy (also called a lobectomy) removes one lobe and the narrow bridge of tissue between them. A total thyroidectomy removes the whole gland. A total thyroidectomy with central neck dissection also removes the lymph nodes sitting in the compartment between the thyroid and the large neck vessels, which is where thyroid cancer most commonly spreads first.

Operation	What is removed	Typical reason	Key implications
Hemithyroidectomy	One lobe and isthmus	Single suspicious or bothersome nodule	One recurrent nerve and two parathyroids at risk; many people need no hormone replacement, though some do
Total thyroidectomy	Entire gland	Cancer, large multinodular goiter, some overactive thyroid conditions	Both nerves and all four parathyroids at risk; lifelong thyroid hormone replacement
Total thyroidectomy with central neck dissection	Entire gland plus central lymph nodes	Cancer with known or suspected nodal spread	Longer operation; higher chance of temporary low calcium because parathyroids share the same compartment

The choice is not purely surgical. It depends on the pathology of a needle biopsy, the size and number of nodules, whether the gland is overactive, and your own preferences about hormone replacement. NHS guidance on thyroid cancer treatment notes that some smaller cancers may be managed by removing only part of the gland, whereas larger tumors or those affecting both lobes are usually treated with total removal.

Ask which of the three is being planned and why. If the answer is “we will decide during the operation,” that is legitimate, but you should know in advance what would tip the decision each way.

Who the thyroidectomy procedure is usually for, and who is usually asked to wait

Surgeons operate on the thyroid for four broad reasons, and each has a different urgency.

The first is cancer, confirmed or strongly suspected on a fine-needle biopsy. Most thyroid cancers grow slowly, so “suspected” rarely means “this week,” but surgery is the mainstay of treatment and is usually scheduled within weeks rather than months. The second is a goiter, meaning an enlarged gland, that presses on the windpipe or food pipe, causing breathlessness lying flat, a feeling of pressure, or difficulty swallowing solid food. The third is an overactive thyroid that has not settled with antithyroid medicines or is unsuitable for radioactive iodine, for example in some people with thyroid eye disease. The fourth is a nodule that is indeterminate on biopsy, where removing one lobe both treats and diagnoses.

Who is asked to wait? Anyone whose overactive thyroid has not yet been brought under control with medicine, because operating on a very overactive gland risks a dangerous surge of hormone during anesthesia. People with untreated high blood pressure or unstable heart disease may be asked to have those addressed first. Someone whose voice already sounds hoarse will often have their vocal cords examined by an ear, nose and throat specialist before the date is set, because a nerve that is already weak changes the surgical plan.

There is a fifth group: people with small, low-risk cancers or benign nodules for whom active monitoring with ultrasound is a reasonable alternative. Mayo Clinic’s patient information on thyroidectomy lists the common indications and stresses that the decision weighs the benefits against risks specific to the individual. Waiting, in that context, is not neglect. It is a treatment choice with its own evidence, and it deserves as much discussion as the operation.

Why the recurrent laryngeal nerve is the operation's central preoccupation

Imagine a thread of white cotton, a millimeter or two wide, running up either side of your windpipe in a shallow groove between the trachea and the food pipe. That is the recurrent laryngeal nerve, the nerve that moves each vocal cord. It is called “recurrent” because it loops down into the chest and then doubles back upward, which is an odd route for a nerve serving the voice box and a reminder that anatomy was not designed with surgeons in mind.

The nerve passes directly behind the thyroid, often crossing the inferior thyroid artery and running within a few millimeters of a small ligament that anchors the gland to the windpipe. That final stretch is where most injuries happen, because the gland is most tightly stuck and the nerve is most exposed.

Injury takes several forms. Stretching or bruising can leave the nerve intact but temporarily stunned, producing a weak or breathy voice that recovers over weeks to months. A cut or thermal burn from a sealing device can cause a permanent weakness on one side. If both nerves stop working, which is rare, the vocal cords may sit close together and narrow the airway, and that is a surgical emergency in the recovery room.

Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic both list voice change as a recognized risk of thyroidectomy; temporary hoarseness is common in the first days, while lasting nerve injury is uncommon and affects a small minority. What the numbers cannot capture is how much the voice matters to the person in front of the surgeon. A teacher, a singer, a call-center worker and a grandparent who reads bedtime stories aloud carry different stakes, and a good consultation asks about them.

The other voice nerve: the external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve

Most people who research thyroid surgery hear about one nerve. There are two on each side, and the second is the one that catches singers.

The external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve is a slender nerve that runs down from above and dips behind the upper pole of the thyroid to reach the cricothyroid muscle, the muscle that tightens the vocal cords and lets you raise your pitch. It does not move the cords, so damaging it does not make the voice hoarse in the usual sense. Instead people notice they cannot hit high notes, cannot project across a room, or tire after twenty minutes of talking.

The danger point is the moment the surgeon seals the superior thyroid artery. The nerve often lies right alongside those vessels, and in some people it actually crosses the upper pole of the gland itself. Standard technique is to seal each branch of the artery individually, close to the gland capsule, rather than clamping the whole bundle higher up where the nerve may be hiding.

Because the change is subtle, injuries to this nerve are under-reported and easy to dismiss as “just recovery.” If your voice sounds normal to your family but feels wrong to you a few months after surgery, that is worth mentioning at follow-up. A speech and language therapist can assess pitch range and vocal fatigue, and voice therapy can help many people adapt.

Before the operation, a simple question captures the stakes: does the professional or personal use of your voice depend on range or stamina? If it does, ask the surgeon how they identify and protect the superior laryngeal nerve, and whether they use nerve monitoring at the upper pole as well as the lower.

How surgeons protect the voice: careful dissection and nerve monitoring

The single most protective act in thyroid surgery is not a gadget. It is seeing the nerve. Decades of surgical evidence support routine identification of the recurrent laryngeal nerve during dissection, rather than trying to avoid the area blindly, because a nerve you have seen is a nerve you can protect.

Surgeons find it using landmarks: the groove between windpipe and food pipe, the inferior thyroid artery, and a tiny parathyroid-like tubercle at the back of the gland. The dissection proceeds from a safe zone toward the danger zone, so that the nerve is traced along its length rather than encountered by surprise. Energy devices that seal vessels with heat are kept a few millimeters away, because heat spreads sideways through tissue.

Intraoperative nerve monitoring adds a second layer. A special breathing tube carries electrodes that rest against the vocal cords. When the surgeon touches a structure with a probe delivering a tiny electrical pulse, the cords twitch if the structure is the nerve, and the monitor confirms it with a signal. Continuous monitoring, in which a small electrode sits on the vagus nerve throughout, can warn of stretch before it becomes injury.

What does the evidence say? Monitoring reliably helps surgeons identify the nerve and predict function at the end of the operation. Whether it reduces the rate of permanent injury compared with expert visual identification alone has been harder to prove in trials, partly because injury is uncommon and trials would need thousands of patients. Many surgeons use it selectively for reoperations, large goiters and cancers, and some use it routinely.

A fair way to ask about this is not “do you use monitoring?” but “how do you identify and protect both nerves, and what would you do if the signal were lost on the first side?” That second question matters, because a lost signal may lead a surgeon to pause before operating on the other side the same day.

Parathyroid glands after thyroidectomy: four glands the size of a lentil

Behind each thyroid lobe sit two parathyroid glands, tan-colored, soft, and roughly the size of a grain of rice or a small lentil. Their only job is to make parathyroid hormone, which keeps the level of calcium in your blood within a tight range by drawing calcium from bone, holding on to it in the kidneys, and activating vitamin D in the gut.

The problem is that they look like fat, sit in the same fold of tissue as the thyroid, and get their blood supply from the same small vessels. A surgeon can leave all four glands in place and still bruise their blood supply enough to stun them for days or weeks. MedlinePlus notes that damage to the parathyroid glands is a recognized complication of thyroid surgery, and low blood calcium in the first days is the most common reason people stay an extra night.

Protection rests on three habits. First, seal the thyroid vessels close to the gland capsule, so the tiny branches feeding the parathyroids are spared. Second, identify each gland and gently sweep it away from the thyroid on its own stalk of tissue. Third, if a gland is inadvertently removed or its blood supply is clearly lost, mince it and implant it into a nearby muscle, where it can regain function over weeks. Surgeons have done this for decades, and it is not a sign of a bad operation.

The distinction that matters to you is temporary versus permanent. Temporary low calcium after surgery is common and usually resolves within weeks as the stunned glands recover. Permanent hypoparathyroidism, meaning the glands never recover enough to keep calcium normal, affects a small minority and is more likely after total thyroidectomy with central neck dissection than after a one-sided operation. MedlinePlus describes the condition and its long-term management, which sits with your endocrinology team.

Total thyroidectomy risks: the honest list beyond nerves and calcium

Voice and calcium dominate the conversation, and rightly so, but a complete consent discussion covers more.

Bleeding into the neck is uncommon but the most urgent complication, because the space under the strap muscles is small and a collection of blood can press on the windpipe. It usually happens within the first hours, which is one reason many surgeons keep people in hospital overnight. The signs are rapidly increasing swelling, a tight feeling, and difficulty breathing, and the treatment is a prompt return to the operating room to release the pressure.

Infection is rare because the neck has an excellent blood supply, but redness spreading from the wound or a discharge should be assessed. A seroma, meaning a pocket of clear fluid under the scar, sometimes forms and usually resolves on its own.

The scar itself heals in a skin crease and typically fades over a year. Some people, particularly those with darker skin or a history of thick scars, may develop a raised or keloid scar; mention that history in advance so it can be planned for.

General anesthesia carries its own small risks, greater in people with heart or lung disease. A sore throat from the breathing tube is common for a few days and separate from nerve injury. Very rarely the windpipe or food pipe can be injured, especially during reoperation or removal of a cancer that has invaded them.

Finally, there is the certainty rather than the risk: after total thyroidectomy you will need lifelong thyroid hormone replacement. Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic both set this out plainly in their patient information. It is not a complication. It is the deal you are making, and it is worth understanding before, not after, the operation.

Before the operation: what preparation usually involves

Preparation for thyroid surgery is more about information than about fasting.

Imaging comes first. An ultrasound maps the nodules and the lymph nodes; for cancers, a CT scan may be added if the tumor is large or thought to extend into the chest. Blood tests check thyroid function, calcium and vitamin D, because a low vitamin D level going into surgery makes low calcium afterward more likely to bite, and the team may address it beforehand.

Your voice will be assessed. At minimum, someone will listen; many teams arrange a laryngoscopy, a quick look at the vocal cords with a thin camera through the nose, particularly if you have had previous neck surgery or your voice has changed. Knowing the baseline protects both you and the surgeon.

If your thyroid is overactive, the endocrinologist will want it controlled with medicine before surgery. This is not optional; operating on an uncontrolled gland risks a surge of hormone during anesthesia. The specifics of which medicines and for how long belong to the prescribing clinician, and you should not alter them on your own.

You will be asked about blood-thinning medicines and supplements, some of which need pausing before surgery under the direction of the team that prescribes them. You will fast from the night before as instructed by the anesthetist.

Practical steps help more than people expect. Arrange for someone to drive you home. Stock soft foods and cold drinks. Plan a week or two off work; MedlinePlus advises that full recovery from thyroid removal generally takes a few weeks. Buy a couple of extra pillows, because sleeping slightly propped up reduces neck swelling in the first nights. And write your questions down, because the consultation before surgery passes faster than anyone anticipates.

Thyroidectomy recovery time: the first days and weeks

The first thing most people notice on waking is that swallowing feels odd rather than painful, as if a thick collar sits inside the throat. The second is that their voice works, though it may sound softer or slightly husky. A sore throat from the breathing tube usually settles within a few days.

Pain from the incision is generally described as moderate and manageable with the pain relief your team prescribes. It is often worst on the first evening and improves steadily; many people describe day three as the turning point. Stiffness in the back of the neck and shoulders, from lying with the head extended during the operation, sometimes bothers people more than the wound itself, and gentle neck stretches shown by the ward team help.

Blood calcium is checked in the hours after a total thyroidectomy, and some teams check parathyroid hormone as well. Tingling around the lips or in the fingertips is the classic early sign of a dip, and the team will have a plan for it. MedlinePlus indicates that people usually go home within one to three days after thyroid removal; many one-sided operations are same-day or overnight.

At home, the pattern most people describe runs like this:

• Days 1 to 3: fatigue, throat discomfort, soft foods, short walks around the house.
• Days 4 to 7: eating normally, voice stronger, wound dressing removed or dissolving glue starting to peel.
• Weeks 2 to 3: return to desk work for many; scar pink and firm; residual tightness on swallowing.
• Weeks 4 to 6: heavier exercise resumed with the team’s agreement; scar beginning to soften.

Cleveland Clinic and MedlinePlus both frame recovery in terms of a few weeks rather than days, and both stress that fatigue can linger longer, especially while thyroid hormone replacement is being adjusted. Timelines are typical ranges, not promises. A recovery that runs slower than a website suggests is not a failure; it is a reason to ask your team whether anything needs checking.

Life after thyroid removal: hormone replacement and the weight question

Can you live a normal life without a thyroid? The mainstream medical answer is yes, provided the hormone the gland used to make is replaced and the level is monitored.

After total thyroidectomy, replacement is with levothyroxine, a synthetic version of thyroxine, the main hormone the gland produced. It is taken by mouth and converted by the body into the active form as needed. Because thyroxine has a long half-life of about a week, blood levels change slowly, and NHS guidance on underactive thyroid explains that the effect of any adjustment is assessed with blood tests over the following weeks rather than days. The amount you need is decided and fine-tuned by your endocrinologist or GP, and it may shift with age, weight, pregnancy or other medicines. That is theirs to manage; do not change it yourself.

After a one-sided operation, roughly a proportion of people will need replacement and others will not; the remaining lobe often compensates. Your team will check thyroid function a few weeks after surgery to find out.

Now, weight. The fear that removing the thyroid causes inevitable weight gain is widespread, and the evidence is more nuanced than either camp claims. Untreated underactivity does slow metabolism and add weight, and NHS lists weight gain among its symptoms. Once replacement is adequate, metabolism returns toward normal. Some studies do find a modest average gain in the years after total thyroidectomy, but the reasons are debated: age, the relief of a previously overactive gland, changes in activity during recovery, and the fact that replacement mimics rather than perfectly recreates a living gland. What the evidence does not support is the idea that thyroid removal makes weight uncontrollable. If your weight changes and your thyroid tests are normal, the conversation is the same one anyone would have with their doctor.

What people often get wrong about thyroid surgery

Myths cluster around this operation, partly because the thyroid is blamed for so much in everyday conversation.

“Thyroidectomy is minor surgery.” It is not major in the sense of open-heart or bowel surgery, and most people are home within a day or two, but it is an operation under general anesthesia beside the airway, two pairs of delicate nerves and four glands that control calcium. Calling it minor undersells the skill involved and the recovery it asks of you.

“If my voice is hoarse afterward, the nerve was cut.” Hoarseness in the first days is usually from the breathing tube, swelling, or a temporarily stunned nerve. Most voice changes settle. A persistent change after several weeks needs a look at the vocal cords, but early hoarseness alone is not proof of injury.

“They removed my parathyroids too.” In almost all operations the surgeon aims to leave every parathyroid in place. Low calcium afterward more often reflects glands that were bruised or whose blood supply was disturbed, and they usually recover.

“Once the thyroid is gone, my metabolism is broken forever.” Replacement hormone does the gland’s job in the bloodstream. Once the level is right, most people feel like themselves.

“I will need to stay in bed for a month.” Walking the day of surgery is encouraged. Cleveland Clinic and MedlinePlus describe a return to most normal activities within a few weeks, with heavy lifting and vigorous sport held back a little longer.

“Radioactive iodine is always needed after cancer surgery.” NHS guidance on thyroid cancer describes it as a treatment used for some people after surgery, depending on the type and extent of the cancer, not as a universal step.

The pattern across these myths is the same: a true fact, stretched to a certainty. The evidence favors ranges and probabilities, and so should your expectations.

Questions to ask your care team before a thyroidectomy

Consultations are short and consent forms are long. A written list evens the odds. These are the questions that, in our experience, change how people feel about the operation afterward.

About the plan

• Which operation are you recommending: one lobe, the whole gland, or the gland with lymph node dissection, and what would change that decision during surgery?
• What would happen if I chose monitoring instead, and how would we know if that was no longer safe?
• Will my vocal cords be examined before surgery?

About the nerves and parathyroids

• How do you identify and protect both the recurrent and the superior laryngeal nerves?
• Do you use nerve monitoring, and what would you do if the signal were lost on the first side?
• If a parathyroid gland loses its blood supply, would you re-implant it?
• How will my calcium be checked after surgery, and what is the plan if it dips?

About recovery

• How long do you expect me to stay in hospital, and what determines going home?
• When will my thyroid function be tested, and who will manage my hormone replacement long term?
• What voice or calcium symptoms should prompt me to call, and whom do I call out of hours?
• When can I drive, return to work and exercise?

About the bigger picture

• If this is cancer, when will I get the pathology result and what are the possible next steps, including whether radioactive iodine might be considered?
• Is there anything about my health, my job or my voice use that changes the risk for me specifically?

You are not being difficult by asking these. Surgeons who operate on the thyroid week in and week out expect them, and the answers tell you as much about how the team communicates as about the operation itself. Decisions about the type of surgery, timing and aftercare remain with your treating team, informed by what matters to you.

When to call your doctor after thyroid surgery

Most recoveries are uneventful, which is precisely why the exceptions need to be recognized quickly. Two problems, one in the first hours and one in the first days, deserve immediate attention.

Seek emergency care now if you develop rapidly increasing swelling or tightness in the neck, difficulty breathing, noisy breathing, or a feeling that you cannot get air in, particularly within the first day or two. Bleeding into the space beneath the neck muscles can compress the windpipe, and it is treated by returning promptly to the operating room. Do not wait to see whether it settles.

Call your surgical team the same day if you notice:

• Tingling or numbness around the lips, in the fingertips or toes, or muscle cramps and twitching, which are the early signs of low blood calcium described by MedlinePlus in its information on hypoparathyroidism; if these are severe or accompanied by spasms of the hands or feet, seek urgent care.
• A voice that is a whisper, or that is getting weaker rather than stronger after the first few days, or any choking or coughing when swallowing liquids.
• A fever, or redness, warmth or discharge spreading from the wound.
• Severe pain that is not eased by the pain relief you were given.
• Persistent vomiting that stops you keeping fluids or medicines down.

Mention at follow-up any hoarseness, reduced pitch range or vocal fatigue lasting more than a few weeks, a scar that is becoming thick and raised, ongoing tiredness once hormone replacement is in place, or a sense that something has not returned to normal. None of these are emergencies, and all of them are things your team would rather hear about than not.

This list is not a tool for diagnosing yourself. It is a guide to which changes should prompt a phone call, and the judgment about what they mean belongs to the clinicians looking after you.

Frequently asked questions

Is thyroidectomy a big surgery?

It is a moderate operation rather than a minor one: general anesthesia, a few hours in theatre, and dissection beside the airway, two pairs of voice nerves and four calcium-regulating glands. Most people are home within one to three days according to MedlinePlus, and back to usual activities over a few weeks. The seriousness lies less in the recovery than in the precision the operation demands.

Can you live a normal life after thyroid removal?

Yes, in the view of mainstream medical guidance, provided the missing hormone is replaced and monitored. Levothyroxine does the gland’s job in the bloodstream, and once the level is right most people report feeling like themselves. Regular blood tests, arranged by your endocrinologist or GP, keep the level on track as your needs change with age, weight or other health events.

How painful is a total thyroidectomy?

Most people describe moderate discomfort rather than severe pain, worst on the first evening and improving over three or four days. Throat soreness from the breathing tube, an odd fullness on swallowing and stiffness in the neck and shoulders are often more noticeable than the incision itself. Your team prescribes pain relief; if pain is not controlled by what you were given, that is a reason to call.

Do you gain weight after a total thyroidectomy?

Not inevitably. Untreated underactivity slows metabolism and adds weight, which is why replacement is started promptly after total thyroidectomy. Some studies find a modest average gain in the years after surgery, but the causes are debated and include age, reduced activity during recovery and relief of a previously overactive gland. With thyroid tests in range, weight is managed the same way it would be for anyone else.

What is the typical thyroidectomy recovery time?

Patient resources from MedlinePlus and Cleveland Clinic describe a hospital stay of about one to three days for total thyroidectomy, a return to desk work for many people within one to two weeks, and full recovery over a few weeks. Heavier exercise usually waits until your team agrees. These are typical ranges, not promises, and tiredness can persist while hormone replacement is adjusted.

What are the main total thyroidectomy risks?

The recognized risks are temporary or, less commonly, permanent voice change from nerve injury; low blood calcium from bruised parathyroid glands, usually temporary; bleeding into the neck in the first hours, which is uncommon but urgent; infection, which is rare; and scar concerns. Lifelong thyroid hormone replacement is a certainty rather than a risk. Your surgeon should explain how each applies to your particular operation.

What happens to the parathyroid glands after thyroidectomy?

The surgeon aims to leave all four in place with their blood supply intact. Because they are tiny and share the thyroid’s vessels, they are sometimes stunned, causing temporary low calcium that recovers over days to weeks. If a gland loses its blood supply, it can be re-implanted into nearby muscle. Permanent hypoparathyroidism affects a small minority and is managed long term by an endocrinology team.

Will my voice change after thyroid surgery?

Some change in the first days is common and usually reflects the breathing tube, swelling or a temporarily stunned nerve. Most voices recover over weeks. A persistent whisper, a voice getting weaker rather than stronger, or a lost upper range lasting beyond a few weeks should prompt examination of the vocal cords. Lasting nerve injury is uncommon, and voice therapy helps many of those affected.

How long does a thyroidectomy operation take?

Cleveland Clinic’s patient information describes roughly two to three hours for the operation itself. Removing one lobe is shorter; a total thyroidectomy with central lymph node dissection or a reoperation takes longer. Time in the operating department also includes anesthesia and recovery, so family should expect to wait longer than the surgical time alone.

What does life after thyroid removal look like day to day?

For most people it looks ordinary: a daily replacement tablet taken as prescribed, blood tests at intervals set by their clinician, and a scar that fades into a neck crease over a year. Some notice the medicine needs adjusting after pregnancy, weight change or a new prescription. If you had cancer, follow-up may add periodic ultrasound and blood markers according to your team’s plan.

References

• Cleveland Clinic: Thyroidectomy (Thyroid Surgery)
• MedlinePlus: Thyroid gland removal
• NHS: Thyroid cancer: Treatment
• MedlinePlus: Hypoparathyroidism

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.