Nonsurgical management of malignant thymoma

Abstract

To the authors' knowledge, there is no standard approach to advanced thymoma apart from surgery (i.e., total resection whenever possible). Despite reports of long term disease control, symptomatic palliation, and encouraging survival data, the majority of studies involved only a small number of patients and were performed in a Phase II approach. Large scale, randomized trials to elucidate the potential of multimodality approaches clearly are needed, and patients with thymoma should be included in such studies.