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Q&A with Dr. Rashmi Roy, the "Goiter Guru" of the Clayman Thyroid Center

Posted: Sep 20th, 2022

Today, we're getting to know the "Goiter Guru" a bit better!

Meet Dr. Rashmi Roy, Senior Surgeon at the Clayman Thyroid Center and operating at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery in Tampa, Florida. Dr Roy is one of the most experienced thyroid surgeons in the U. S. As in all of our surgeons, Dr. Roy only performs thyroid surgery with the highest cure rates and lowest complication rates, and has been exclusively performing thyroid surgery for more than a decade.

Q&A with Dr. Rashmi Roy, the "Goiter Guru" at the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery

1) Tell me about your background and how you started your career in endocrine surgery?

My parents are originally from India, and I was born and raised in Long Island, New York. I completed my general surgical residency at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. I quickly realized my passion for endocrine surgery during my residency and decided to focus my career on thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenal surgery.  I applied for an Endocrine Surgery Fellowship after residency, and I was accepted to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where I continued my training.  After graduating, I started my own endocrine surgery practice in Princeton, New Jersey where I also became Chair of their Cancer Committee.  My practice became one of the highest volume endocrine surgery practices in the area, and I remained there for the first 8 years of my career.

2) What made you decide to join the Clayman Thyroid Center/HFES team?

When I heard about the Clayman Thyroid Center and was recruited down to Tampa, I was most impressed with the vision of the Clayman Thyroid Center and the plans for the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery.

The Clayman Thyroid Center is so special in so many ways, but the two that were most appealing to me were becoming a subspecialty surgeon and creating a VIP experience for our patients. The idea that I would only be performing thyroid surgery, be doing more thyroid operations than anyone in the country, and becoming the world’s expert in thyroid surgery sounded amazing to me.  Secondly, providing the best experience for my patients and making them feel taken care of was also very appealing.  The center was created to provide our patients with expert evaluations and surgical cures in the most efficient manner possible while essentially holding their hands throughout the entire process.

The plan for the Hospital for Endocrine Surgery was literally the icing on the cake.  There is no other hospital in the world like it.  The world’s best thyroid surgeons, combined with the world’s best parathyroid and adrenal surgeons all housed in one place sounded so exciting! When I joined the practice almost 5 years ago, the HFES was just a vision and now it has become reality…and it truly is amazing!

3) What is unique about the experience your team provides to the patient?

Everyone on our team is handpicked and every person that our patients encounter truly cares.   From the moment someone fills out a form to become a new patient, they are called by a thyroid surgeon to review their history and their individual plan for their surgery. Our patients have immediate access to us to ask us any questions they have because we know how stressful surgery can be for them, preoperatively and postoperatively. Once a patient walks through the doors of our hospital, they are personally greeted with a smiling face and escorted throughout their whole day of evaluation, surgery, and recovery. We try to make the process as smooth as possible and to provide a true VIP experience for them.

4) What makes your team stand apart from other thyroid surgeons?

The two main things that separates our center from other facilities is our efficiency and our outcomes.

The Clayman Thyroid Center and Hospital for Endocrine surgery prides itself in the efficiency of our evaluation, diagnosis, and surgical process for thyroid cancer. Our expert evaluation starts with a high-resolution ultrasound.  If anything suspicious is found, a biopsy is performed immediately and we have those results in 20 minutes.  We have the capability to then perform surgery on those patients the same day, which is especially important for our out-of-state and international patients.  In the operating room, we have real time pathology when needed with results back in 10 minutes allowing us to perform the correct operation for each individual patient.

Our outcomes are unmatched anywhere else in the country, and this is due to our high level of experience in thyroid surgery. From our nurses, scrub techs, and ultrasonogrophers, to our anesthesiologists and surgeons…this is all we do.  We are all experts in thyroid surgery. The more experience you have with thyroid disease and thyroid surgery, the better the patient outcomes will be.

5) Tell me about a rewarding patient outcome

We perform thyroid surgery for many different reasons: thyroid cancer, suspicious thyroid nodules, Graves’ disease, Hashimoto’s disease, and multinodular goiters. One of my favorite operations to perform is removal of the massively enlarged thyroid goiters.  I remember a patient who found me on my YouTube Channel "Goiter Guru" and reached out to me to help her with her large goiter.  Her goiter had grown way down into her chest and it was causing her difficulty breathing and difficulty swallowing.  She lived on the west coast and had seen over 5 surgeons who all told her that she would need her chest split open in order to get her thyroid out. 

She was a young mom and a breast cancer survivor who struggled with fertility and finally had a set of 2-year-old twin girls. She loved playing with them and cherished her time with them.  She wanted her thyroid removed and her quality of life back, but she also did not want to bear the thought of the painful recovery of her chest being split open. She wanted a quicker, less painful recovery so she could spend time with her daughters. 

She already had her surgery scheduled in her home town with a thyroid surgeon and chest surgeon, but then she found me on YouTube.  After reviewing her scans, I told her that I could remove her thyroid without splitting her chest open.  She cancelled her surgery and was in my operating room 2 weeks later.  She had a successful operation, and I was able to remove her large goiter from her neck, without opening up her chest.  She spent one night in the hospital and was back home 2 days later, recovering well at home with her family.  She still sends me emails thanking me and pictures of her playing with her kids.

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