Surgical staging and advanced surgical techniques in thymic cancers

Abstract

Thymoma and thymic carcinoma are the most frequent anterior mediastinal neoplasms that originates from epithelial tissue of the thymic gland. Histologic classification of thymomas has been under debate for many years until the World Health Organization (WHO) published and updated the histologic classification of thymomas in 1999 and 2004, respectively [1, 2]. In updated version, type C thymomas were classified in to separate type of thymic tumors as thymic carcinomas (Table 17.1). The widely used staging system, Masaoka classification published in 1981 and further refined with little modifications as the Masaoka-Koga staging system in 1994 (Table 17.2), was proved to be a significant factor for survival [3, 4].