Thyroglossal duct cyst is one of the frequently encountered congenital cervical lesion in childhood, and appears simple to deal with, but when incompletely resected, a high rate of recurrence is revealed. Authors have reviewed 51 cases of
thyroglossal
duct cyst and fistula who underwent surgical operation during the period from June 1970 to February 1991 at the Department of General Surgery Pusan Paik Hospital. The results were obtained as follows; The majority of the cases were under 20-years
old
age(78.4%) and the ratio of male to female was 1.7 : 1. The common symptom and signs were soft palpable painless cystic mass(72.5%) and draining sinus at anterior neck(19.5%). Entire cases of lesion were located in the midline of neck, among
them,
41
cases(80.3%) were located in infrahyoid portion and 8 cases(15.7%) were located in suprahyoid portion of the hyoid bone. The size of entire masses were under 3 cm, 23 cases(45.1%) were under 2cm, 28 cases(54.9%) were between 2cm and 3cm. All 51
cases
were surgically resected with Sistrunk procedure under the general anesthesia, and there was no recurrence or complication following surgery Among 51 cases, 37 cases(73%) were diagnosed as thyroglossal duct cyst at outpatient clinic, and were
confirmed
to be same disease postoperatively. And 14 cases(27%) were diagnosed to be recurrent thyroglossal duct fistula at outpatient clinic, in all these cases, the cyst were postoperatively confirmed as recurrent thyoglossal duct cyst, also. In summary,
it was
found that the recurrence of thyroglossal duct cyst and fistula was due to incomplete resection of hyoid bone anyway. So we concluded that the curative treatment of the thyroglossal duct cyst and fistula should be accomplished by complete
excision
of
the cyst and fistula with central resection of hyoid bone(Sistrunk operation).
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