Background: Substernal goiter, also said cervico-mediastinic goiter, is a thyroid formation with cervical departure that goes beyond, with stretched neck, the superior thoracic strait for at least 3 cm and that preserves, generally, the parenchimal or fibrous connections between the cervical and thoracic portion, maintaining a direct vascularization supplied by the thyroid arteries. The prevalence of this pathology is very variable and fluctuates between 1.7% and 30% of all thyroid damages. The actual classification is provided by the radiologic examination of the chest and, above all, by the new techniques of imaging.
Methods: In the period between January 1998 and December 2003, 332 patients with thyroid pathology have been treated surgically. Forthy-five (13.5%) of these were afflicted with a cervico-mediastinic goiter. In 32/45 (71.1%) cases a total thyroidectomy has been performed by collar carving in accordance with Kocher; in 11/45 (24.5%) cases an hemithyroidectomy has been performed by collar incision; in 2/45 (4.4%) cases, already submitted to surgical intervention of isthmus-lobectomy a totalization has been performed.
Results: The surgical technique foresees always an anterior collar neck incision. This way of access is to prefer in the substernal goiters, both for the presence of a cervical vascularization easy to control and for the possibility, nearly always realizable, to dislocate the goiter by that way. As for what concerns the results of the histological examination, in 2/45 (4.5%) cases it has been set a diagnosis of follicular carcinoma (one of them surely invading and the other, leastly invading), in 3/45 (6.6%) cases papillary carcinoma, in 4/45 (8.8%) cases colloido-cystic goiter, in 33/45 (73.5%) cases micro-macrofollicular hyperplasia (in one of which contemporarily compromise from lymphoma of Hodgkin); in 3/45 (6.6%) cases of adenomatous hyperplasia of the thyroid.
Discussion: The surgical approach has been in all cases the collar neck incision in accordance to Kocher, and it has never been necessary to associate a sternotomy or thoracotomy. After the intervention, in all the patients the symptomatology tied to the mediastinal compression has disappeared. The goiter showed signs of neoplastic degeneration in 11.1% of the cases, with prevalence of the papillary carcinoma in the 6.6% and, in the remaining 4.5%, of follicular carcinoma. These data are superimposable to the data gathered in other surveys. All the patients passed the post-operating hospitalization in optimal conditions and have been discharged during the fourth post-operating day with the prescription of increasing levothyroxine doses according to the body weigh.