Comparison of the Quality of Life for Thyroid Cancer Survivors Who Had Open Versus Robotic Thyroidectomy.

OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this study was to compare the quality of life (QoL) between conventional open and robotic total thyroidectomy in papillary thyroid carcinoma.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

From January 2011 to July 2013, 229 patients (112 robot and 117 open) were randomly selected. QoL, including overall satisfaction, cosmetic results, voice/sensory change, postoperative pain and impairment of swallowing, neck/shoulder movement, and physical/psychological activity, was recorded.

RESULTS

The follow-up period was 32.3 ± 6.3 months. The satisfaction levels of the overall and cosmetic results were 8.95 ± 1.23, 8.40 ± 1.20 and 3.86 ± 0.04, 3.21 ± 0.10 for robotic and open surgery, respectively; these differences were statistically significant (P = .006, <.001). The sensory change might be more noticeable with robotic thyroidectomy (P = .064). There were no differences in the results concerning other variables among the two groups.

CONCLUSION

Robotic thyroidectomy shows comparable results to conventional open thyroidectomy in terms of the postoperative long-term QoL.