Abstract

Doc number: 311

Abstract

Background: Chylothorax is an extremely rare but potentially life-threatening complication after radical neck dissection. We report the case of a bilateral chylothorax after total thyroidectomy and cervico-central and cervico-lateral lymphadenectomy for thyroid carcinoma.

Case presentation: A 40-year-old European woman underwent total thyroidectomy and neck dissection for papillary thyroid carcinoma. Postoperatively she developed dyspnoea and pleural effusion. A chylothorax was found and the initial conservative therapy was not successful. She had to be operated on again and the thoracic duct was legated.

Conclusion: The case presentation reports a very rare complication after total thyroidectomy and neck dissection, but it has to be kept in mind to prevent dangerous complications.

Details

Title
Bilateral chylothorax following neck dissection: a case report
Author
Runge, Tina; Borbély, Yves; Candinas, Daniel; Seiler, Christian
Pages
311
Publication year
2014
Publication date
2014
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
17560500
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-7-311
ProQuest document ID
1538543505
Copyright
© 2014 Runge et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.