[Isolated malignant mediastinal lymphadenopathy]

Mediastinal adenopathies without pulmonary disease may be benign, lymphomatous or the metastases from intra- or extrathoracic malignancy or more rarely metastases with unknown primary site. We observed 507 patients with isolated mediastinal adenopathies: benign, lymphomatous and metastatic disease represented 41.4% (210/507), 26.8% (136/507), 31.8% (161/507) of them, respectively. Management of the latter was the most challenging. Surgery was generally diagnostic, restricted to confirming the metastatic process, because of too numerous and disseminated or unresectable lymph nodes in 84% of patients (135/161). However, radical surgery consisting in lymphadenectomy proved effective in case of mediastinal lymph node malignancy without other extra- and intrathoracic disease. We observed long-term good results in such cases, which also was demonstrated by case reports in the literature. We suggest that including surgery in the multimodality treatment of mediastinal metastatic lymph nodes may be advisable in selected patients.