Analysis of Clinical Diagnosis and Surgical Treatment in Fifty-eight Patients with Invasive Thymoma

Objective 　To generalize the experience in the diagnosis and t reatment of invasive thymoma. Methods 　By performing retrospective study on 58 patients, to generalize the experience in the diagnosis and treatment of such disease. Results 　In the aspect of operative approaches, 58 patients were divided into two groups, namely median sternotomy (43 cases) and anterolateral approach (15 cases) . 41 cases received complete tumor resection, 14 cases received palliative resection and others just received tumor biopsy. Among those with complete thymoma resection, 36 cases were performed enlarged tumor resection, including mediastinal pleural resection (27 cases), lung wedge resection (7 cases), superior vena cava or innominate vein partial resection and vascularplasty (9 cases) and replacement of superior vena cava (4 cases) . seventeen patient s with Ⅲ and Ⅳ stage thymoma only received palliative resection or tumor biopsy. The residual tumor tissues were implanted radioactive particles (¹²⁵I) in 14 patient s and 1 patient received radiof requency hyperthermia. All the patients survived and those, received complete tumor resection, had recovered very well and had higher quality of life, except only 1 case had still edema symptom in his face after replacement of superior vena cava. Among 58 patients, 23 patients survived 3 years and the survival rate was 39. 7 %. Conclusion 　Surgical therapy is playing an important role in the treatment of invasive thymoma. Radical tumor resection is very necessary for those suitable for operation and precautions must be taken to remove all the mediastinal fat tissues in order to reduce thymoma recurrence rate. For those with so large thymomas that can not be resected completely, in order to improving resection rate and prolonging survival time, therapy plan should add radiotherapy and (or) chemotherapy before (or after) operation.