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Development of a thymectomy trial in nonthymomatous myasthenia gravis patients receiving immunosuppressive therapy

Gil I Wolfe1, Henry J Kaminski, Alfred Jaretzki

  • 1Department of Neurology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, Texas 75390-8897, USA. gil.wolfe@utsouthwestern.edu

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
|November 1, 2003
PubMed

Thymectomy has been regularly used in the management of nonthymomatous autoimmune myasthenia gravis (MG), but its benefits have not been established in a randomized, controlled trial. The widespread use of thymectomy in MG patients without thymoma is largely based on retrospective, nonrandomized case series that have produced a consensus that the procedure is sometimes beneficial. Still, the benefits and utilization of thymectomy are actively debated among MG experts. In this paper, we describe the development of a multicenter, international trial to determine whether extended transsternal thymectomy reduces corticosteroid requirements for patients with generalized AChR antibody-positive nonthymomatous MG.

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