Objectives: the objective of our study was to clarify survival and treatments in patients with incompletely resected thymoma.
Methods: between January 1991 and December 2012, 156 consecutive patients who underwent thymectomy with curative intent at Kyoto University Hospital, were evaluated retrospectively. Overall survival and progression-free survival were analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method, comparing the complete resection group (n = 141) with the incomplete resection group (n = 15). Potentially relevant factors for overall survival and progression-free survival in patients with incompletely resected thymomas were analyzed using Cox proportional-hazard models.
Results: there was a significant difference in progression-free survival (p = 0.0012) but not in overall survival (p = 0.638) following thymectomy in the complete and incomplete resection groups. Adjuvant chemotherapy was performed in 6 (40%) patients and adjuvant radiotherapy in 6 (40%) in the incomplete resection group. In univariate analysis, younger age (p = 0.073) showed a tendency for better overall survival, and adjuvant chemotherapy (p = 0.071) showed a tendency for better progression-free survival.
Conclusion: our results suggest that patients with incompletely resected thymomas can achieve comparable overall survival to those with completely resected thymomas. Adjuvant chemotherapy for incompletely resected thymomas tends to improve progression-free survival.
Keywords: Chemotherapy; Disease-free survival; Neoplasm; Radiotherapy; Survival rate; Thymoma; adjuvant; residual.
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