Treatment of Thymic Carcinoma

Thymic carcinoma is rare, and the optimal treatment is undefined. For patients with clearly resectable well-defined disease, surgical resection is often the initial therapeutic intervention. For patients with clinically borderline or frankly unresectable lesions, neoadjuvant (preoperative) chemotherapy, thoracic radiation therapy, or both have been given.[1] Patients presenting with locally advanced disease are carefully evaluated and undergo multimodality therapy. Patients with poor performance status and high associated operative risks are generally not candidates for these aggressive treatments. Patients with metastatic disease may respond to combination chemotherapy.