Original article: general thoracicTherapy for thymic epithelial tumors: a clinical study of 1,320 patients from Japan
Section snippets
Patients
We sent a questionnaire on thymic epithelial tumors to 185 institutes certificated as special institutes by The Japanese Association for Chest Surgery, and received replies from 115 institutes (62%). We compiled records of 1,320 patients with thymic epithelial tumors (1,093 thymomas, 186 thymic carcinomas, and 41 thymic carcinoids) who were treated between 1990 and 1994. The thymoma patients consisted of 495 men and 590 women. The patients' ages ranged from 8 to 94 years, with a mean age of
Stage of disease
The stages and the histologic types of thymic epithelial tumors are shown as follows. In thymoma, 522 patients (48.3%) were in stage I, 247 (22.8%) in stage II, 204 (18.9%) in stage III, 73 (6.8%) in IVA, and 35 (3.2%) in IVB. In thymic carcinoma, 10 patients (5.3%) were in stage I, 11 (5.9%) in stage II, 74 (39.0%) in stage III, 26 (13.9%) in IVA, and 61 (32.6%) in IVB. In thymic carcinoid, 8 patients (19.5%) were in stage I, 4 (9.8%) in stage II, 12 (29.3%) in stage III, 4 (9.8%) in IVA, and
Comment
The Masaoka staging system is advocated as the appropriate one to adopt 7, 15. In this study, the rates of stage I, II, III, and IV thymoma were 48%, 23%, 19%, and 10%, respectively. The treatment of thymoma depends upon its clinical stage. Most patients with stage I thymoma were treated by surgery alone, and patients with stage II and III thymomas were treated by surgery with radiotherapy. Patients with stage IV thymomas were treated by surgery with adjuvant therapy including chemotherapy. Our
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