European endocrine surgery in the 150-year history of Langenbeck’s Archives of Surgery

Abstract

All in all, the 150-year publication record of Langenbeck's Archives of Surgery closely reflects the history of European Endocrine Surgery. Following the path of seminal articles from Billroth, Kocher, and many other surgical luminaries published in the journal more than 100 years ago, Langenbeck's Archives of Surgery today stands out as the principal European journal in the field of endocrine surgery.

Loss of the nerve monitoring signal during bilateral thyroid surgery

“…Germany, having only a short coastline to the north (North Sea and Baltic Sea), is a country with longstanding iodine deficiency and a high prevalence of bilateral multinodular goitre. It has a long tradition of goitre surgery30 and continued debate about the appropriate extent of thyroid resection and RLN management31. In this specific environment, the arrival of intraoperative nerve monitoring was greeted with enthusiasm by the German endocrine surgical community, perceiving this new technology as a valuable adjunct to visual RLN identification4, 31–33.…”

Dynamics of loss and recovery of the nerve monitoring signal during thyroidectomy predict early postoperative vocal fold function

“…Injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN), disrupting quality of life and triggering malpractice suits more often than any other operative complication, has continued to haunt thyroid surgery from its humble beginning in the 19th century to this very day. [1][2][3][4] Traditional risk minimization measures, lowering the frequency of this dreaded surgical complication, include anatomic identification of the RLN 5 and 2-stage thyroidectomy upon loss of the nerve monitoring signal on the first side of resection to circumvent bilateral vocal fold palsy. 6 The recent advent of neurophysiological techniques, enabling instant verification of nerve function through vagus nerve stimulation during the operation in real time, as it were, held great promise for prediction of postoperative vocal fold function.…”

“…Injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN), disrupting quality of life and triggering malpractice suits more often than any other operative complication, has continued to haunt thyroid surgery from its humble beginning in the 19th century to this very day . Traditional risk minimization measures, lowering the frequency of this dreaded surgical complication, include anatomic identification of the RLN and 2‐stage thyroidectomy upon loss of the nerve monitoring signal on the first side of resection to circumvent bilateral vocal fold palsy …”

State of the art: surgery for endemic goiter—a plea for individualizing the extent of resection instead of heading for routine total thyroidectomy

“…From the very beginning, surgery for endemic goiter [15,19,27,29,35] has been winding its way between the need to remove all diseased thyroid tissue as a potential source of recurrence, often implying total thyroidectomy, and the greater morbidity associated with the procedure [4,5,10,11,14,20,25,34,37,48,50]. Endemic multinodular goiter, representing the final stage of iodine deficiency [30], involves the thyroid gland as a whole.…”