Original article
Role of staging in prognosis and management of thymoma

https://doi.org/10.1016/0003-4975(91)90999-7Get rights and content

Abstract

Eighty-five patients operated on for thymoma from 1972 to 1989 were evaluated, 32 with myasthenia gravis and 53 without. Masaoka staging revealed stage I disease in 45 (53%), stage II in 23 (27%), stage III in 14 (16%), and stage IVa in 3 (4%). There was no operative mortality. Actuarial survival at 10 years was 63.7% for all patients: 78.3% for those in stage I, 74.7% for those in stage II, and 20.8% for those in stage III. There was no recurrence in patients in stage I. Mediastinal recurrence developed in 4 patients in stage II considered to have noninvasive disease by the surgeon. It is recommended that all patients be followed up for a minimum of 10 years and that all patients in stages II and III receive postoperative radiotherapy. The presence of myasthenia gravis is no longer considered as an adverse factor in survival.

References (13)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (144)

  • Elective Nodal Irradiation as Adjuvant Radiotherapy for Advanced Thymomas and Thymic Carcinomas

    2019, Clinical Lung Cancer
    Citation Excerpt :

    The present study demonstrates good control of advanced stage Ts and TCs treated with complete thymectomy combined with adjuvant RT (5-year OS, 97.4%). Although the 5-year OS of stage III and IV Ts is considered to be 50% to 87% and 46% to 50%, respectively, OS seen in the present study was notably higher.14-16 This is likely owing to the fact that the present study enrolled patients who received R0 or R1 resections, which are associated with excellent survival rates.

  • Thymoma and thymic carcinomas

    2016, Critical Reviews in Oncology/Hematology
    Citation Excerpt :

    Generally, patients with TCs present symptoms related to local invasion while more often patient with Ts present parathymic syndromes such as myasthenia gravis (MG). Of symptomatic patients, 40% present with chest pain, cough, hoarseness and dyspnoea (less frequently superior vena cava syndrome) related to the intra-thoracic mass, 30% have systemic symptoms making it difficult to differentiate from lymphoma (weight loss, rarely fever and night sweats) and the rest have neurological symptoms (Lewis et al., 1987; Quintanilla-Martinez et al., 1994; Wang et al., 1992; Elert et al., 1988; Blumberg et al., 1995; Wilkins et al., 1999, 1991; Moore et al., 2001; Kaiser and Martini, 1989). Rarely, thymic tumours can present as primary lesions outside the anterior mediastinum, such as the middle and posterior mediastinum, pleura, neck, and as intra-thyroidal lesions with histological characteristics of T (SETTLE: spindle cell epithelial tumours of thymic-like epithelium) (Quintanilla-Martinez et al., 1994).

View all citing articles on Scopus

Presented at the Twenty-seventh Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, San Francisco, CA, Feb 18–20, 1991.

View full text