Introduction:

thyroid surgery has two main complication areas: those inherent to any surgery and those directly related to the surgical technique; so, they must be previously studied and classified by the surgeon before operating on a patient as they can compromise life during the surgical act or after it.

Objective:

to characterize existing classifications for complications related to thyroid surgery.

Method:

a 5-year descriptive and retrospective study on existing classifications for complications related to thyroid surgery was conducted using Pubmed as a data source. The universe consisted of 842 publications on thyroid disorders and the sample, 256 publications from 2015 to 2019 on complications related to thyroid surgery.

Results:

the North American region predominated in publications (22.6%), as well as the authors who do not classify complications in their publications (57.04%), the mayority of which (52.7%), only enumerates the five most frequent. The authors that classify complications (42.96%), mentioned the early and late classification (29.1%), as the one more often used in the publications.

As to the number of complications described by authors, the report of the five most frequent predominated (62.1%), and from the valued elements to classify complications, the etiopathogenic predominated (100%), followed by evolution time (22.6%), localization (17.96%) and aesthetics (6.25%), without any evidence, in the reviewed literature, of the fact that authors take into account lethality and nature of complications.

Conclusions:

the North American region was the one with more publications all over the world; the mayority of the authors do not classify complications in their publications, they only describe the five most frecuent, using the early and late classification in the first place; so, they only take into account evolution time and not lethality and nature of complications; also, just a few of them consider aesthetic.

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