Consensus statement by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinology (AACE) and the American Head and Neck Society Endocrine Surgery Section (AHNS‐ES) on Pediatric Benign and Malignant Thyroid Surgery

Head & Neck · 2021 · 22 citations

• Medicine
• General surgery
• Family medicine

OBJECTIVES: To provide a clinical disease state review of recent relevant literature and to generate expert consensus statements regarding the breadth of pediatric thyroid cancer diagnosis and care, with an emphasis on thyroid surgery. To generate expert statements to educate pediatric practitioners on the state-of-the-art practices and the value of surgical experience in the management of this unusual and challenging disease in children. METHODS: A literature search was conducted and statements were constructed and subjected to a modified Delphi process to measure the consensus of the expert author panel. The wording of statements, voting tabulation, and statistical analysis were overseen by a Delphi expert (J.J.S.). RESULTS: Twenty-five consensus statements were created and subjected to a modified Delphi analysis to measure the strength of consensus of the expert author panel. All statements reached a level of consensus, and the majority of statements reached the highest level of consensus. CONCLUSION: Pediatric thyroid cancer has many unique nuances, such as bulky cervical adenopathy on presentation, an increased incidence of diffuse sclerosing variant, and a longer potential lifespan to endure potential complications from treatment. Complications can be a burden to parents and patients alike. We suggest that optimal outcomes and decreased morbidity will come from the use of advanced imaging, diagnostic testing, and neural monitoring of patients treated at high-volume centers by high-volume surgeons.

COVID‐19 Anosmia Reporting Tool: Initial Findings

Otolaryngology · 2020 · 405 citations

• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Psychiatry

There is accumulating anecdotal evidence that anosmia and dysgeusia are associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. To investigate their relationship to SARS-CoV2 infection, the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery developed the COVID-19 Anosmia Reporting Tool for Clinicians for the basis of this pilot study. This tool allows health care providers to confidentially submit cases of anosmia and dysgeusia related to COVID-19. We analyzed the first 237 entries, which revealed that anosmia was noted in 73% of patients prior to COVID-19 diagnosis and was the initial symptom in 26.6%. Some improvement was noted in 27% of patients, with a mean time to improvement of 7.2 days in this group (85% of this group improved within 10 days). Our findings suggest that anomia can be a presenting symptom of COVID-19, consistent with other emerging international reports. Anosmia may be critical in timely identification of individuals infected with SARS-CoV2 who may be unwittingly transmitting the virus.