Patients can now access the UKRETS registry directly from a consultant profile on the PHIN website, and then search by consultant name, region and town to see more details on their surgical area of practice. There are currently more than 100,000 entries in the UKRETS database.

The registry is managed by the British Association of Endocrine and Thyroid Surgeons (BAETS), the representative body of British Surgeons who have a specialist interest in surgery of the endocrine glands (thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal).

Dr Ian Gargan, PHIN Chief Executive, said: “Our vision is that ‘Everyone can make confident choices about their healthcare to get the best outcomes’. We collect and publish information to help patients with their choices, but don’t want to duplicate efforts, or cause more work for those submitting data. We are therefore very pleased that the BAETS is the latest organisation to work with us to highlight the information it publishes and make it easier for patients to access. It is important that as a sector, we help educate patients, using simpler language which makes the information more useful to them.”

Alison Waghorn, BAETS President and Consultant Endocrine Surgeon at Liverpool University Hospitals Trust, said: “UKRETS was established with the aim of improving the quality of services and outcomes for patients undergoing endocrine surgical operations. Our aim at BAETS is to improve patient surgical care and we hope that teaming up with PHIN in this way will help patients have more informed discussions with their surgeons.”

UKRETS allows surgeons to enter/collect data on thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal operations as well as some rarer endocrine tumours. The information on the database includes numbers of endocrine surgical operations, indications for surgery, results of pre-operative biopsies and scans, extent of surgical operations, intra-operative surgical adjuncts used, pathology details, post-operative complications, length of stay, re-admission rates, mortality, and long-term outcomes such as hypocalcaemia and voice change following neck surgery. Comparative data is available for the surgeons who enter data.

Published numbers of operations are only available for those surgeons who regularly enter data into the UKRETS database.