Australian surgical training is amongst some of the best available in the world and whilst Fellows of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons have superb training, not all surgeons maintain a specific  interest or workload in Endocrine Surgery ( Surgery of the Thyroid, Parathyroid, Adrenal and other neuroendocrine organs) despite some offering this type of surgery to patients.

 

There is clear evidence that high volume surgeons in Endocrine Surgery have the best results in terms of reduced morbidity and superior outcomes. High volume has variably been defined as anything between 25-100 cases per year. One of the most discriminatory questions you can ask your surgeons is how many Endocrine procedures do they perform per year? Don't be embarrassed, surgeons are used to answering this question and due diligence is your responsibility. To be able to answer this question accurately and honestly your surgeon should maintain their own audit and undergo a peer review process of their results.  

 

For surgeons that do not maintain their own audit, then this surgical truism is likely to apply.

 

“ if a surgeon tells you his volume of experience … halve it, and if he tells you his complication rate … double it”.

 

It is human nature to exaggerate your experience and outcomes particularly if meticulous audit is not performed and you are given a guesstimate at best. Dean Lisewski has accurate audit for every patient he has ever operated on and performs annual peer review of his results under the auspices of WAES.