PURPOSE Video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) techniques have been widely used for resection of mediastinal tumors. This study investigated the usefulness of the subxiphoid approach in thoracoscopic thymectomy. METHODS In all, 36 patients with anterior mediastinal tumor underwent thymectomy using the subxiphoid approach in two Japanese institutions. These patients were retrospectively review...

objectives after the introduction of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (vats) thymectomy, there has been increased interest in the use of this technique for myasthenia gravis. we conducted a retrospective study to assess the safety and efficacy of vats thymectomy in treatment of myasthenia gravis. patients and methods the medical records of 50 patients who underwent vats thymectomy for the t...

OBJECTIVE While thymectomy is an accepted treatment for myasthenia gravis (MG), video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) thymectomy has recently become a popular surgical treatment, especially for non-thymomatous MG (NTMG). This study aims to compare the results of VATS thymectomy and trans-sternal thymectomy, and identify prognostic factors in NTMG patients after thymectomy. METHODS A 10-...

Anesthesia for thymectomy in myasthenia gravis is challenging. Early surgical management is now considered to be an important therapeutic intervention for most of the patients of myasthenia gravis. The anesthetic experience of that technique is quite large. It involves either muscle relaxant or non-muscle relaxant techniques. However, the literature is deficient of standard anesthetic technique...

Total thymectomy combined with medical therapy is currently the most effective therapeutic strategy for patients with myasthenia gravis. The standard approach for total thymectomy is that of a median sternotomy. Other approaches include the cervical approach and partial sternotomy. We report a patient who underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic thymectomy at our institution. There was no postope...

BACKGROUND Thymectomy has been a mainstay in the treatment of myasthenia gravis, but there is no conclusive evidence of its benefit. We conducted a multicenter, randomized trial comparing thymectomy plus prednisone with prednisone alone. METHODS We compared extended transsternal thymectomy plus alternate-day prednisone with alternate-day prednisone alone. Patients 18 to 65 years of age who ha...

a retrospective comparative study was performed on 54 patients treated medically or surgically (thymectomy) for myasthenia gravis (mg) from 1979- 1989 in three shiraz university hospitals. each surgical patient was compared with a medical patient on the basis of age, sex, severity and duration of disease. complete remission was noted in 3 out of 27 thymectomized patients but in none of the medi...

The influence of thymectomy and long term immunosuppression on the phenotype of CD4 T lymphocyte subsets, which were defined by the restricted expression of CD45RA and CD45RO markers, was studied by double immunofluorescence in 29 patients in different clinical stages of generalised myasthenia gravis. In the acute stage of myasthenia, before thymectomy and immunosuppression, no differences in C...

Complete removal of the thymus and fatty tissue adherent to pericardium is crucial for treating myasthenia gravis. Our aim was to analyze our surgical and clinical results and early experience of robot-assisted thymectomy in patients with nonthymomatous myasthenia gravis. Between January 2008 and October 2010, 8 patients, all women, with nonthymomatous myasthenia gravis underwent robot-assisted...

Thymectomy during early childhood is generally thought to have serious consequences for the establishment of the T-cell compartment. In the present study, we investigated the composition of the T-cell pool in the first 3 decades after thymectomy during infancy due to cardiac surgery. In the first 5 years after thymectomy, naive and total CD4(+) and CD8(+) T-cell numbers in the blood and T-cell ...