Thymectomy and cancer: A further report

The predictive value of longitudinal neuropsychologic assessment in the early detection of brain tumor recurrence

“…Differences between these studies are unlikely to arise from differences in patient treatments since we did not find evidence that irradiation or thymic surgery strongly affected cancer risk. Similarly, Vessey et al did not find increased overall cancer risk in myasthenia gravis patients treated with thymectomy 20. Unlike our study, prior studies included “benign” thymomas,9, 10, 11, 20 but it seems improbable that benign thymomas would more frequently be associated with subsequent cancers than malignant thymomas.…”

Risk of extrathymic cancer in patients with myasthenia gravis in Taiwan: a nationwide population‐based study

“…Our results did not prove the association between MG and any specific cancer. Some previous studies have reported that breast cancer is the leading extrathymic malignancy in patients with MG [7,10–12]. Breast cancer was the leading extrathymic malignancy in our MG cohort, but when compared with the age‐ and comorbidity‐matched control group, there was only a non‐significant trend with an IRR of 1.59 ( P = 0.099).…”

Thymoma is associated with an increased risk of second malignancy

“…10 There also were a few studies that specifically addressed the association between myasthenia gravis and extrathymic malignancy, in which the incidence of malignancies ranged from 5% to 18% in patients with myasthenic thymoma. [11][12][13][14][15][16] The results of the latter studies cannot be compared with our current results, because patients with nonmyasthenic thymoma were excluded. The variation in the numbers and tumor types may have resulted in part from the different nature or referral patterns of the institutions and the length of follow-up.…”

“…Previous studies also disclosed that resection of thymus by itself did not enhance the emergence of extrathymic tumors. [11][12][13][14][15][16] Some authors even suggested that thymectomy reduced the incidence of extrathymic neoplasms in myasthenic patients. 11,13,14 Whether the elevated risk of second malignancies in thymoma patients results from an impaired or disordered immunologic function requires more subtle research.…”