Thyroid and Breast Surgery

The Thyroid and Breast Surgery Specialty Group of Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, was established in 1989; the Thyroid and Breast specialty was established in 2003 and is an important component of Tongji Hospital's national key discipline—General Surgery. As the Breast Center of Tongji Hospital, it was selected as one of the first batch of breast cancer standardized diagnosis and treatment quality control centers of the National Cancer Center. Currently, the department has four wards (including General Surgery Ward II at the Sino-French New City Campus and General Surgery Ward IV at the Optics Valley Campus), and its academic leader is Professor Li Xingrui. The department has 195 beds and currently 37 physicians, including 7 physicians with senior professional titles and 11 with associate-senior professional titles. Several experts and professors from Thyroid and Breast Surgery hold important academic positions, such as chairperson, deputy chairperson, and standing committee member, in national and provincial academic organizations, and serve as editor-in-chief, deputy editor-in-chief, and editorial board member, among other roles, at many influential medical journals in China. For example, Professor Li Xingrui serves as a member of the Thyroid and Metabolic Surgery Group of the Surgery Branch of the Chinese Medical Association; a member of the Breast Cancer Professional Committee of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association; deputy chairperson of the Youth Committee of the Clinical Practical Technology Branch of the China International Exchange and Promotive Association for Medical and Health Care; deputy chairperson of the Youth Committee of the Thyroid Branch of the Oncology Minimally Invasive Treatment Professional Committee of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association; and chairperson of the Youth Committee of the Breast Cancer Expert Committee of the Hubei Clinical Oncology Society, among others. Professor Zhang Lin serves as a standing committee member of the Breast Disease Professional Committee of the China Medical Education Association and deputy chairperson of the Oncology Plastic Surgery Expert Committee of the Hubei Clinical Oncology Society, among others. This discipline specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of various thyroid and breast tumors. Outpatient services are diversified, including special-needs, MDT, expert, specialized, day-surgery, and day chemotherapy/targeted-therapy clinics, among others. The outpatient department has a breast disease minimally invasive treatment room, a core-needle and fine-needle aspiration biopsy room, a thyroid nodule ablation treatment room, and a mammary ductoscopy examination room, and has become a clinical medical center integrating early diagnosis of thyroid and breast diseases, comprehensive treatment, and minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment of breast diseases. Annual in-person outpatient visits exceed 150,000, while annual online outpatient visits exceed 36,000. This discipline was the first in Central China to carry out minimally invasive rotary-cutting treatment and breast duct endoscopic diagnosis and treatment, and is at the forefront in the early diagnosis and minimally invasive treatment of breast diseases. Among these, annual breast minimally invasive surgeries exceed 4,500 cases, annual thyroid fine-needle aspirations exceed 6,200 cases, and core-needle biopsies number approximately 1,600 cases; annual inpatient Grade III and IV surgeries exceed 8,000 procedures, of which Grade IV surgeries account for more than 80%. In recent years, the specialty has hosted multiple large domestic/regional academic conferences on thyroid and breast diseases, regularly organized multiple training courses on minimally invasive breast surgery and infusion-port implantation, and provided advanced training in endoscopic thyroid surgery using various approaches (transoral, axillary, chest-breast approaches, etc.) and oncoplastic breast surgery (such as breast implant reconstruction, autologous tissue reconstruction, and endoscopic breast surgery), and has established a comprehensive standardized model for breast cancer treatment (including surgery, neoadjuvant/adjuvant chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, immunotherapy, and targeted therapy). It actively carries out standardized treatment of mid- and late-stage thyroid cancer and has pioneered the technique of rapid intraoperative identification of the parathyroid glands during thyroid surgery (PTH-ICGT), thereby advancing the high-quality development of the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid and breast tumors in China.