Thymic carcinoma natural history, complications and prognosis

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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]; Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Alejandro Lemor, M.D. [2]Parminder Dhingra, M.D. [3]

Natural History

• Thymic carcinomas are generally considered indolent tumors due to long recurrence intervals (median of 68 months).
• Overall, for patients diagnosed with a resectable thymic tumor, 16% of them will recur after radical resection, either locally with pleural or ganglionar recurrence or with distant metastases.
• The most common sites of distant recurrence are lung, liver, bone, kidney, brain and bone marrow.

Complications

• There are no reported cases of complications regarding the carcinoma by itself.
• Most complications occur during surgery and biopsy.

Prognosis

The most important factor for prognosis is the stage and grade of the thymic carcinoma. The 5-year and 10-year overall survival rates in patients with thymic carcinoma are 38% and 28%, respectively.

The subtypes squamous cell carcinoma, mucoepidermoid and basaloid carcinoma have a better prognosis than other histological subtypes. For neuroendocrine carcinomas, the malignancy is intermediate between thymoma and thymic carcinoma, being the small cell and large cell carcinomas the most malignant.