Endocrine surgery is a recently developed sub-specialty surgical category. It entails a difficult technical nature and associated risks of operating in the neck. Specialty training became available in the continental USA to help train surgeons within this highly specialized field.
Surgical procedures are geared towards endocrine glands to attain a hormonal or anti-hormonal effect in the human metabolism. Almost always, this entails doing surgery to remove a tumor which has grown on or within an endocrine gland. The field of endocrine surgery typically comprises surgery for the thyroid gland, parathyroid glands, and adrenal glands.
The most common endocrine surgery operation is removal of the thyroid (thyroidectomy), followed by parathyroid surgery (parathyroidectomy), and by the rare operation on the adrenal glands (adrenalectomy).
William Méndez-Latalladi, MD
Division Director