Injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve is the most serious complication of thyroid surgery. Patients with injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve usually suffer from vocal cord paralysis, which will affect the quality of life of patients to varying degrees, and in severe cases, will cause the patients to become invalid. Despite the rapid progress of modern basic and clinical medicine, the accumulation of relevant knowledge and experience, and the unremitting efforts of scholars from various countries, and the use of various intraoperative preventive measures, damage to the laryngeal nerve in thyroid surgery still occurs from time to time. According to recent literature, the total incidence of laryngeal nerve injury in thyroid surgery: Procaccioante et al. (2000) reported 1% to 6%; Dackiw et al. (2002) reported 2% to 13%; Doikov et al. (2001) recorded 1.5% to 14%. From January 1990 to 2001, a total of 1805 thyroid surgeries of various types were performed at Xiangya Hospital, and a total of 22 cases of laryngeal recurrent nerve injury occurred, accounting for 1.2%. Steure et al. (2002) reported that the total incidence of laryngeal nerve injury in surgery for benign thyroid disease and malignant thyroid tumors was 5.9%; the incidence of permanent laryngeal nerve injury was 2.4%, and the incidence of laryngeal nerve injury in surgery for nodular thyroid with normal thyroid function was 1.4%. Garhard et al. (1994) reported that in 797 cases of thyroid surgery, the incidence of permanent laryngeal nerve injury was higher than that of benign thyroid surgery. The incidence of nerve injury was 0 in 736 cases of first surgery for benign disease, 7.5% in 40 cases of reoperation for benign disease, and 4.8% in 21 cases of thyroid cancer surgery. Among the 1805 thyroid surgeries performed at Xiangya Hospital, 243 cases of hyperthyroidism, 37 cases of Hashimoto’s disease and 15 cases of subacute thyroid did not have any injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve (the incidence of injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve was 0.6% in 1550 cases of hyperthyroidism performed before 1986), 12 cases (1.1%, mostly in cases of total thyroid lobe removal) of the recurrent laryngeal nerve occurred in 1118 cases of thyroid adenoma surgery, and 12 cases of nodule surgery (1.1%, mostly in cases of total thyroid lobe removal). The incidence of laryngeal nerve injury was 0.6% in 1,118 cases of thyroid tumor surgery, 12 cases of laryngeal nerve injury in 1,118 cases of thyroid tumor surgery (1.1%, mostly in total thyroid lobectomy), 2 cases of nodular goiter in 171 cases (1.2%), and 7 cases of thyroid cancer in 221 cases (3.2%). The incidence of laryngeal nerve injury is also closely related to the training and experience of the surgeon and is very similar to the incidence of surgical complications of cholecystectomy. The incidence of laryngeal nerve injury is lower in surgeons who initially perform thyroid surgery, but increases with experience and then decreases as experience is gained.