Diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of thymoma: analysis of 116 cases / 中华外科杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVES</b>To study the diagnosis and treatment of thymoma and to assess prognosis factors.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The clinical data on 116 patients with thymoma were collected. A retrospective analysis was performed by comparison of their survival rates computed by the actuarial method and rate of recurrence and metastasis.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Chest radiograph was used chiefly for the preoperative diagnosis of thymoma; myasthenia gravis (MG) (25.0%, 29/116) was the most common paraneoplastic disease. An extensive and radical resection was carried out to reduce the recurrence rate of thymoma with stage I and stage II (chi(2) = 4.941 P = 0.0219). The survival time was prolonged by postoperative radiotherapy and chemotherapy. A strong correlation was noted between the clinical stage and histologic subtype of M-H classification, by which the invasive behavior of thymoma was predicted (r = 0.385, P = 0.007). The 3-, 5-, and 10-year survival rates were 81.2%, 67.9% and 40.5%, respectively. Statistical analysis showed a significant negative correlation between stage and survival rate (r = -0.897, P = 0.0000).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The prognosis of thymoma depends mainly on the histologic subtype, clinical stage and multimodality treatment rather than paraneoplastic diseases.</p>