Outcomes after surgical resection of thymic carcinoma

Abstract

We retrospectively evaluated the outcomes of surgical resection of thymic carcinoma. This study included 14 patients treated at our hospital from 2006 to 2015, comprising 9 men and 5 women with a mean age of 61.9 years. The histological types were squamous cell carcinoma in 11 patients and adenocarcinoma, typical carcinoid, and large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma in 1 patient each. Two of the 14 patients had stage I cancer, 3 had stage II, 5 had stage III, 1 had stage IVa, and 3 had stage IVb. Twelve of the 14 patients underwent complete resection, and 9 (64.3%) required extended resection. There were seven operative morbidities; however, there were no operative mortalities. Adjuvant radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy was performed in 7 of the 14 patients. The 3-year disease-free survival (DFS) rate was 38.3% and 3-year overall survival (OS) rate was 61.4%. The operative time and intraoperative bleeding for Masaoka-Koga stage I/II cancer were significantly shorter and less compared with those for stage III/IV cancer (p=0.016 and p=0.006, respectively). The DFS for Masaoka-Koga stage I/II cancer tended to be better than that for stage III/IV cancer (p=0.053). We suggest that patients with Masaoka-Koga stage III/IV thymic carcinoma can survive for longer periods of time with future multimodal therapy.