Head and Neck Surgery

In July 2013, in response to the call of “patient-oriented, disease-centered” and while implementing the requirements of a professionalized and refined management philosophy, Renji Hospital integrated the advantageous resources of the former Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and the Department of General Surgery and established the Department of Head and Neck Surgery, whose primary task is the diagnosis and treatment of head and neck diseases, making it one of the earliest hospitals in Shanghai to establish a Department of Head and Neck Surgery. The Department of Head and Neck Surgery mainly treats thyroid and parathyroid tumors (including primary/secondary hyperparathyroidism), laryngeal tumors (including benign lesions such as laryngeal polyps, as well as laryngeal cancer), salivary gland tumors, neck soft-tissue tumors, and other diseases. The Department of Head and Neck Surgery currently has 16 doctors, including 3 chief physicians and 2 deputy chief physicians. Most of the department’s doctors have more than one year of overseas exchange experience and maintain good clinical and research cooperation with many leading departments in Europe and the United States. Following the policy of “go out and invite in, ” several doctors in the department have spoken at international conferences and exchanged their achievements, and they also regularly participate in organizing international academic conferences in China to exchange cutting-edge concepts in the diagnosis and treatment of head and neck tumors. In June 2022, to further tap its potential, the department moved from the Western Campus of Renji Hospital to its new location on the 11th floor of the outpatient building of the Eastern Campus of Renji Hospital. In less than ten years since its establishment, the department has published more than 70 domestic and international papers (including nearly 40 SCI papers), and has secured and completed approximately 10-plus projects at the national, municipal, bureau, and other levels. The annual surgical volume of the Department of Head and Neck Surgery has steadily increased and currently averages more than 3000 operations per year; among these, the surgical quality for thyroid malignancies, a key disease category in Shanghai, consistently ranks among the top three of the city’s general hospitals in terms of surgical volume; the department’s signature procedures include nearly 120 operations annually for primary/secondary hyperparathyroidism; its new technologies include more than 100 endoscopic thyroid operations annually; and there are nearly 100 operations annually for various benign and malignant laryngopharyngeal tumors. The department’s thyroid tumor surgery has reached a leading level in Shanghai, while its parathyroid tumor surgery has reached the city’s highest level. From the department’s inception, the Department of Head and Neck Surgery has advocated a patient-centered approach, joining with all relevant clinical departments to conduct multidisciplinary case discussions and academic exchanges. It brings together experts from the Nuclear Medicine Department, Ultrasound Medicine Department, Department of Endocrinology, Department of Nephrology, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Radiation Oncology, Department of Oncology, and other sister departments to conduct annual health education, lectures, and free clinics on thyroid and parathyroid diseases, winning widespread welcome and unanimous recognition from patients and their families. With the strong support of the hospital leadership, the department was among the first to establish the Multidisciplinary Diagnosis and Treatment Center for Thyroid and Parathyroid Diseases (MDT, Multidisciplinary treatment). Adopting a multidisciplinary collaborative approach, it has optimized diagnostic and treatment procedures through multidisciplinary collaboration, diagnosed and treated a large number of difficult and critically ill cases, and earned a good reputation among patients; in addition, by jointly conducting preoperative needle biopsy for thyroid cancer and BRAF gene testing with the Ultrasound and Laboratory Departments, it established a standardized clinical evaluation and management system for thyroid nodules based on “morphology-function-pathology-gene”; and it reached an in-hospital consensus on the diagnosis and treatment of parathyroid tumors, greatly reducing the perioperative mortality rate of parathyroid tumors, particularly secondary hyperparathyroidism.