This prospective study was carried out to find out the incidence and nature of post operative complications following total thyroidectomy in the management of carcinoma thyroid and multinodular goiter and to analyze the factors which are related with the development of complications. Study was done in the Department of ENT & Head-Neck Surgery, Surgery, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and Department of ENT & Head-Neck Surgery, Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh from April 2006 to September 2006. Fifty patients (50) were included prospectively for this work. The patients were between 12-63 years of age with a maximum incidence in 4th decade. Female was the predominant sex with a ratio of 4.55:1. Twenty eight patients were suffering from papillary carcinoma. Nine patients were suffering from follicular carcinoma, four patients from medullary carcinoma and nine patients from multinodular goiter. Out of 50 patients, 14(28%) developed complications. The complications were haematoma (4%), recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy (6%), hypoparathyroidism (16%) and wound infection (2%). All of them suffered from temporary complications except one patient, who suffered from persistent hypoparathyroidism. Recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis in all three cases was unilateral. Complications were relatively more common in male. In carcinoma patients the rate of complications was more than twice than the multinodular goiter cases. Among the carcinoma cases, 7.31% cases developed recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis and 19.51% cases developed hypoparathyroidism. From this study it is observed that a good number of patients still suffer from complications following total thyroidectomy.
