Thymectomy in myasthenia gravis. The Jamaican experience

Forty-five patients with myasthenia gravis (MG) were subjected to thymectomy by the median sternotomy technique and were followed up for 4,380 patient months. No operative deaths occurred and 93.3% of the patients benefited from surgery with 28.8% achieving remission. Forty patients (88.5%) showed improvement within one month, and 73% of those who achieved remission did so in the first 2 years. Outcome was not affected by thymic pathology except in one patient who had a thymoma removed. These results confirm the value of thymectomy in the management of MG patients with generalised disease and the efficacy of the simple median sternotomy procedure.