Multimodality approach in treatment of thymic tumors

Abstract

Thymic tumors are rare neoplasms showing important clinical and pathologic polymorphisms ranging from low-mitotic encapsulated tumors to a highly aggressive and disseminating one. Complete resection of the tumor with surrounding fatty and mediastinal tissue is of paramount importance and provides good prognosis. Diagnosis of the tumor, radiologic evaluation and implementation of multimodal treatment including preoperative chemotherapy, radiotherapy, postoperative radiotherapy, adjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy are important components of the treatment strategy. Some of the stage III tumors can be resected without additional treatment, however, there is a good evidence to support administering preoperative and postoperative chemotherapy and postoperative radiotherapy in these patients providing higher complete resection rate and better survival. For stage IVA thymomas, surgery alone should not be considered as an effective approach and these tumors are considered as unresectable. Chemo/ radiotherapy can be administered to those patients. Of those, postoperative chemotherapy and radiotherapy should be considered if these patients who were deemed to be previously unresectable become resectable. The combined modality treatment should provide prevention of locoregional and intrathoracic recurrence and eventually long-term survival with cure. New targeted therapies including agents against PI3K, CDK, and immune checkpoint PD-1/PD-L1 may lead to higher response rates with less toxicity.