Materials and Methods: 159 patients who underwent surgery in our center for anterior mediastinal mass between January 2005 and December 2016 were analyzed retrospectively. Of the patients who had thymectomy procedures, 76 with thymoma or thymic carcinoma were included in the study.
Results: The mean age of the patients was 51 ± 14.3 (18-77) years. Forty-seven patients (61.8%) were male, and 29 (38.2%) were female. Fourteen of the patients (18.4%) were aged 65 years or older. Sixteen patients (21.1%) also had myasthenia gravis. The diagnosis was thymoma in 67 patients (85.2%) and thymic carcinoma in 9 patients (11.8%). There were no statistically significant differences in survival outcomes based on Masaoka or World Health Organization (WHO) thymoma stage. In terms of the extent of resection, survival time was 83.4 ± 10.5 months for patients who had simple thymectomy and 124 ± 5.4 months among patients who underwent extended or maximal thymectomy (p = 0.043).
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that thymoma stage and histopathologic subgroup were not prognostic factors, while extended resection was the most significant factor in survival.
