Feasibility and safety of a new robotic thyroidectomy through a gasless, transaxillary single-incision approach.

摘要

We have read with interest the article by Dr Ryu and colleagues,1 and would like to congratulate the authors for their innovative ideas, highly prudent in the development of robotic head and neck surgery. This group has adopted and mastered this technique for many years; all the other institutes have gained experience only recently.2 We have some queries for the authors:1. Because the authors included patients with well-differentiated thyroid carcinoma <2 cm and excluded those with definite extrathyroidal tumor invasion, how did they include T3 and T4a lesions? 2. Similarly, they excluded patients with lateral neck node metastasis, so how did they include Nib lesions? 3. Why did they exclude the distant metastasis, since a well-differentiated intrathyroidal follicular thyroid cancer with a distant solitary focus can be removed as safely as one without any distant metastasis?