During the procedure, patients usually are placed under general anesthesia, meaning they are asleep for the procedure. For patients who may be at risk with general anesthesia, the surgery may be performed with intravenous medications under regional anesthesia. The patient remains awake but without pain.

An incision is made in the front of the neck and all or part of the thyroid gland is removed. Surgeons will be careful to avoid any damage to surrounding nerves or blood vessels in the neck. They will also work to preserve the parathyroid glands, two small glands located near the thyroid. After the thyroid gland is removed, the incision will be closed with stitches.

Surgery to treat follicular cancer is slightly more complicated than surgery to treat papillary cancer. Follicular cancer usually cannot be diagnosed until the tissue has been analyzed by a pathologist. A technique known as frozen section is sometimes used during surgery to complete this analysis. It usually takes less than 10 minutes to complete. Once the surgeon knows the results of the tissue analysis based on the pathology report, the surgical procedure can be completed.

The entire surgery usually takes between two and two-and-a-half hours to complete.