Treatment and survival analyses of completely resected thymic carcinoma patients

PURPOSE To investigate the impact of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy on disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) rates of patients with thymic carcinoma after complete resection. METHODS Between 2001 and 2013, 54 patients with complete resection of thymic carcinoma in Hangzhou Cancer Hospital were retrospectively reviewed. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to evaluate the survival rates. The Cox proportional hazard model was used for multivariate analysis. RESULTS Among the 54 patients, Masaoka stage I was observed in seven patients, II in 22 patients, and III in 25 patients. Sixteen patients received adjuvant chemotherapy (six with chemotherapy alone and ten with radiotherapy and chemotherapy), 25 patients received adjuvant radiotherapy, and 13 patients did not receive radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy. The 5-year DFS and OS rates for all patients were 63.0% and 73.4%, respectively. Univariate analysis revealed that radiotherapy was significantly associated with DFS and OS (P=0.014 and P=0.029, respectively), while adjuvant chemotherapy was not (P=0.122 and P=0.373, respectively). Multivariate analysis showed that adjuvant radiotherapy increased DFS (P=0.041), but not OS (P=0.051). CONCLUSION Complete resection followed by adjuvant radiotherapy increased disease-free rates of thymic carcinoma patients.