Unusual Stridor Following Thyroid Surgery

The complications following thyroid surgery are rare due to better preoperative preparations and proper surgical techniques; however, complications like hematoma formation and recurrent laryngeal nerve injury are known to cause airway obstruction and can be fatal. We report a case of a 35 year old euthyroid patient, with preoperative diagnosis of multinodular goiter thyroid who underwent total thyroidectomy. In this patient both intra operative and immediate post- operative period was uneventful, but the patient developed airway obstruction after one hour of thyroidectomy, to maintain the airway patient shifted to operation room, and re-exploration of the wound was performed but no abnormalities were found. As patient was not in distress maintaining saturations around 90% on room air, bronchoscopy under intravenous midazolam sedation showed paradoxical vocal cords movement and web covering anterior part of subglottis . patient was put on steroids and calcium gluconate for four days in ICU, improvement in symptoms observed and transferred to surgical ward.