Background:  Remarkable increase in incidence of thyroid cancer over previous decade has resulted in increased need for thyroid surgery.
Aim and objectives: Goal of research was to evaluate safety and efficacy of using vessel sealing device ligasure (COVIDIEN®) in terms of intraoperative and postoperative complications, comparing to standard vascular ligation in open thyroid surgery.
Patients and methods: A randomized-controlled trials that was conducted at Department of General Surgery of Assiut University Hospitals. A total of 80 patients were scheduled for thyroidectomy participated in the research. Those patients were randomly subdivided into 2 categories. Category 1 included cases who underwent conventional vessel ligation (n= 40 patient) and category 2 included cases who underwent ligasure vessel sealing (n=40 patients). The study was conducted in the period between 2019 and 2021.
Results: Both groups had insignificant difference regarding overall recorded complications (8 (20%) vs. 7 (17.5%); p < /em>= 0.51). One patient in each group developed hoarseness while recurrent transient laryngeal nerve damage was recorded in two patients in each category. The most frequent complication was transient hypocalcaemia (12.5% of conventional ligation and 10% of ligasure sealing group).
Conclusion: Ligature was superior to conventional approach in terms of lowering operation time, perioperative and postoperative blood loss, and parathyroid damage. RLN injuries, on the other hand, were comparable in both categories. Although shorter operative periods led to lower operating room occupancy expenses, overall cost of surgery was considerably greater in ligasure category.