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Seniors able to tolerate thyroid surgery

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Published: October 28, 2009

Do seniors who undergo surgery for thyroid ailments face a higher risk of complications and ending back up in the hospital?

No, a newly published study suggests.

With the portion of the U.S. 65 and older rapidly rising as the baby boom generation ages, so is the number of people in that age group with diseases of the thyroid.

That prompted researchers at the Medical College of Georgia to undertake a multiyear study tracing the postoperative histories of 428 patients who had their thyroid glands removed at two hospitals in Augusta, Ga., the MCGHealth Medical Center and the Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Among the study subjects were a senior group of 44 patients who were 65 or older and 86 young adults between 21 and 35.

The surgeries took place between November 2003 and December 2007.

What Dr. Melanie W. Seybt, an MCG endocrine-head and neck surgeon, and her colleagues discovered was that there were only slight differences in post-surgical complications and hospital readmission rates between the senior and young adult groups.

"We were pleasantly surprised," said Seybt, the first author of a paper on the study that was published in the journal Archives of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery. "We suspected older patients might be admitted to the hospital more often, have more complications and more cancer."

Among the study's findings:

•Among the senior group, 45.5 percent of the patients were able to have their thyroids removed on an outpatient basis, compared to 51.2 percent in the younger group.

•The complication rate in the seniors was 12.5 percent and 11.1 percent in the young adults.

•In the seniors, 27.3 percent of the removed thyroids were found to be malignant, compared to 18.6 percent in the younger group.

The readmission rate among seniors was more than three times higher than in the younger people, 4.5 percent vs. 1.2 percent. The majority of the readmissions among the seniors, however, were in response to problems related to calcium levels. The researchers did not consider this an age-related surgical complication.

Neither group had post-operative bleeding or permanent vocal cord paralysis.

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