A previous study of 70 cases of thymoma described in 1966 by the author1 reported that definite germinal centers were found in the normal thymic tissue attached to one case of thymoma associated with myasthenia gravis, and that this was very interesting from the point of view of whether thymoma or thymic germinal center was a more important occurrence of a myasthenic condition. Since then routi...

Chromosome translocations involving T cell receptor (TCR) loci have been found in tumors from Ataxia telangiectasia (AT) patients and in mouse Atm-/- thymoma, suggesting the involvement of V(D)J recombination in these malignancies. By introducing a RAG-1 deficiency into Atm-/- mice in the presence of a TCR transgene, we show that V(D)J recombination is critical for thymoma development in these ...

A carcinoid tumor of the thymus combined with thymoma in a 62-year-old man is described. The mediastinal tumor had been present for 13 years and was associated with pure red cell aplasia. Carcinoid tumor occupied the central two-thirds of the tumor, consisting of nests and trabeculae of monotonous round cells, which ultrastructurally showed many intracytoplasmic dense-core granules. Typical spi...

A 42-year-old woman with short-term memory loss visited Gangnam Severance Hospital, and her chest X-ray and computed tomography revealed a right anterior mediastinal mass. On hospital day two, she suddenly presented personality changes and a drowsy mental status, so she required ventilator care in the intensive care unit. She underwent thymectomy, and was pathologically diagnosed with thymoma, ...

Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is a T-cell-mediated reaction that most commonly develops after transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells. In rare conditions, GVHD-like symptoms are observed in patients with thymoma. We present the case of a 58-year-old man with thymoma noted 6 years earlier who initially presented with myasthenia gravis and subsequently developed GVHD-like disease with symp...

A 55-year-old man with an 8-year history of invasive thymoma presented with sudden onset of left hemiparesis. Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging showed a right frontal lobe intracerebral hemorrhage and the possibility of brain metastasis could not be rejected. The patient underwent removal of the hematoma. Histological examination showed brain metastasis from invasive ...

Background: Curative treatment of malignant thymoma is resection; however, this may be precluded by invasion of vital organs. Patients and methods: Two patients with extensive intrathoracic spread of thymoma (Stages III and IV A) are presented. Treatment involved a combination of resection, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Results: One patient survived 9 years, 4 months, but eventually died of me...

Thymoma is the most common primary tumor of the anterior mediastinum and often recurs after initial surgical resection. In this case series, percutaneous cryoablation, a locally ablative technique, was used to treat 25 mediastinal and pleural recurrent thymoma lesions in five patients. Safety and short-term efficacy data were collected. In 23 percutaneous cryoablations (92%), there were no or m...

The coincidence of autoantibodies against the acetylcholine receptor (AChR) and muscle striational antigens (SA) is a characteristic finding in thymoma-associated myasthenia gravis (MG), but their origins are still unresolved. Some common muscle antigens that were shown to be targets of anti-SA autoantibodies in thymoma-associated MG have also been detected in normal or neoplastic thymic epithe...

AIM The purpose of the present study was to characterize the morphological features of thymoma metastases in lymph nodes and to evaluate the possibility of their subtyping according to the 2004 WHO classification of thymus tumors. MATERIALS AND METHODS We reviewed 210 thymoma cases in our series of thymic epithelial tumors (TET), including their recurrences and lymphogenous metastases. Three ...