2-day Prophylactic Antibiotic is Effective in Transoral Endoscopic Thyroidectomy

Remote-access thyroid surgery has gained popularity and has advanced significantly over the past two decades, given the patient desire to avoid cosmetically displeasing scarring. The mostly recently introduced remote thyroid surgery is the transoral endoscopic thyroid surgery via vestibular approach (TOETVA). Because of the several advantages comparing with other removeaccess thyroid surgery, making it nowadays growing in popularity since 2016. However, TOETVA carry some inherent risks, including mental nerve injury, tumor seeding and local recurrence, fibrosis-induced long-lasting pulling sensation below the lower jaws, and surgical site infection coming from the clean-contaminated environment of oral incision.

Comparing with clean wound via the traditional open surgery, TOETVA carry the potential risk of infection. Based on the author's recommendation, prophylactic antibiotic (augmentin) will be administered 30 minutes before incision at operative room, followed by 2-day course of intravenous antibiotic, then shift to 5-day course of oral antibiotic finally. Up to date, only few case complicating postoperative infection were reported with extremely low infection rate (<1%). Therefore, the investigators want to study the short-course (2 days) of antibiotic coverage is also effective to prevent surgical site infection. It was proved in the preliminary study, comprising 5 patients in each group (2-day course in the study group and 7-day course in the control group). Later, the investigators will recruit more patients (n=100) to confirm this study.

Inclusion criteria

• Suspicious or proved thyroid cancer with size smaller than 4cm
• Symptomatic benign thyroid nodules less than 6cm in size
• Thyroid cyst
• Follicular neoplasm
• Graves' disease

Exclusion criteria

• Previous thyroid or parathyroid surgery
• History of radiation at neck
• Could not tolerate the general anesthesia.