Advanced approaches for thyroid surgery.

Over the past several years, new surgical approaches to the thyroid have been described, and efforts to further refine thyroid surgery continue. These new approaches can be classified by the anatomic location that access is obtained and whether CO(2) insufflation is necessary for the procedure to be performed. While these new approaches provide the potential for exciting innovation, more work should be done to refine some of these techniques and study the implications of adopting them from the perspective of patient outcomes and cost.