You probably haven’t given much thought to your thyroid throughout your life as the gland worked quietly behind the scenes to produce key hormones. These days, however, your thyroid is all you can think about as doctors are telling you that you or a loved one would be better off without the gland.
To help you better process and understand the thyroidectomy recommendation, our experienced team at Rockwall Surgical Specialists is using this month’s blog to explore the circumstances in which thyroid surgery can make good sense.
Your thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland in your neck. It has two lobes — and this can be good news because it allows some flexibility. A thyroidectomy can be either partial or total.
For example, if your thyroid disease only affects one side of the gland, that’s often all we will remove, allowing the other lobe to continue to produce thyroid hormones. If you require a total thyroidectomy, you will likely have to take daily thyroid hormone replacement pills.
Your thyroid produces key hormones that regulate important areas of your health, such as metabolism, body temperature, heart rate, and digestion, so you still very much need thyroid hormones.
Some of the more common reasons why doctors recommend thyroidectomies include:
This form of cancer isn’t terribly common — slightly more than 44,000 cases of thyroid cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2025. When it does strike, one of the frontline treatments is to remove the thyroid to eradicate and contain the cancer.
About 5% of people in the US develop a goiter, which is an enlarged thyroid gland. In many cases, goiters don’t lead to symptoms and life goes on. When a goiter does become symptomatic — meaning it becomes large enough to interfere with other functions, such as swallowing, or it’s associated with cancer — thyroid surgery is a good option.
Thyroids can also develop growths called nodules, which are quite common. Sometimes, these nodules can grow large enough to lead to symptoms or a nodule can become toxic and produce excess thyroid hormones (hyperthyroidism).
When this happens, we usually perform a partial thyroidectomy and remove the lobe that contains the problematic nodule(s).
There are other reasons why a doctor might recommend a thyroidectomy, but the above conditions account for most thyroid surgeries. If you have more questions about thyroid surgery, our Rockwall Surgical Specialists team is happy to answer them as we have extensive experience in this area.
To contact our team, call us at 972-412-7700 or use our online form to set up an appointment. We have offices in Rockwall, Rowlett, Greenville, Terrell, and Forney, Texas.
