Original Article Survival and treatments in patients with incompletely resected thymoma

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 sur-vival were analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method, comparing the complete resection group (n 141) with the incom-plete 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