Predictive factors for intraoperative excessive bleeding in Graves’ disease

Summary Background In Graves’ disease, because a thyroid tends to have extreme vascularity, the amount of intraoperative blood loss (AIOBL) becomes significant in some cases. We sought to elucidate the predictive factors of the AIOBL. Methods A total of 197 patients underwent thyroidectomy for Graves’ disease between 2002 and 2012. We evaluated clinical factors that would be potentially related to AIOBL retrospectively. Results The median period between disease onset and surgery was 16 months (range: 1–480 months). Conventional surgery was performed in 125 patients, whereas video-assisted surgery was performed in 72 patients. Subtotal and near-total/total thyroidectomies were performed in 137 patients and 60 patients, respectively. The median weight of the thyroid was 45 g (range: 7.3–480.0 g). Univariate analysis revealed that the strongest correlation of AIOBL was noted with the weight of thyroid ( p