Reference Centre for Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery

Certified Reference Centre for Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery in the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg Thyroid Competence Network e.V.

Thyroid diseases require the cooperation of different disciplines to ensure optimal care for patients. Specialists from various disciplines in the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg region have come together and founded an association so that this goal can be realised.

In the "Thyroid Competence Network Bonn/Rhein-Sieg", modern conservative and surgical treatment concepts are coordinated. In addition, interdisciplinary case conferences and discussions take place on the tumour board. Further training events for medical staff and patient information events are held regularly.

The first chairman of the association, with which many colleagues in private practice are involved, is the nuclear medicine specialist Prof. Dr. H. Palmedo from the Joint Practice for Radiology and Nuclear Medicine Bonn (Dr. W. Wolfgarten). The Department of General and Visceral Surgery is a founding member of the association and Prof. Dr. Türler serves as 2nd chairman.

Endocrine surgery, in particular the treatment of benign and malignant thyroid and parathyroid diseases, has traditionally been a focus of the Visceral Surgery Department at Johanniter-Krankenhaus and is performed with state-of-the-art methods in a high number of cases. Particularly worthy of mention are the minimally invasive approaches that yield the best cosmetic results, and continuous neuromonitoring. The in-house frozen section pathology department can identify malignant thyroid nodules during the operation and thus avoids unnecessary follow-up surgery. In addition, parathyroid hormone determinations are performed during the operation so that parathyroid adenomas can be reliably identified.

In 2011, the department was successfully certified as a reference centre for thyroid and parathyroid surgery by the Surgical Working Group Endocrinology of the German Society for General and Visceral Surgery. In Germany, there are currently only 15 specialised centres with this high level of certification (as of 2016). For certification, many criteria necessary for successful treatment must be fulfilled, such as the expertise of the surgeons, the infrastructure, the high quality of treatment, follow-up care, etc.