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Objective To determine the association between surgeons’ experience and postoperative complications in thyroid surgery.

Design Prospective cross sectional multicentre study.

Setting High volume referral centres in five academic hospitals in France.

Participants All patients who underwent a thyroidectomy undertaken by every surgeon in these hospitals from 1 April 2008 to 31 December 2009.

Main outcome measures Presence of two permanent major complications (recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy or hypoparathyroidism), six months after thyroid surgery. We used mixed effects logistic regression to determine the association between length of experience and postoperative complications.

Results 28 surgeons completed 3574 thyroid procedures during a one year period. Overall rates of recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy and hypoparathyroidism were 2.08% (95% confidence interval 1.53% to 2.67%) and 2.69% (2.10 …