Successful treatment of advanced thymic carcinoma with lymph node and pleural metastases: A case report

Thymic carcinoma is a rare type of cancer that is more aggressive and is associated with a poorer prognosis compared with thymoma. No definitive clinical management of this disease has been established to date. This report describes the 20-year clinical course of a 50-year-old male patient who was successfully treated for initially diagnosed stage IVb thymic carcinoma. Thymo-thymectomy combined with resection of the surrounding organs was performed on December 1995 with curative intent (R0) after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. From June 2008 until present, four pleural and subclavicular lymph node metastases have been treated with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, followed by low-dose oral steroid therapy. The patient has remained disease-free for the last 20 months since the initiation of prednisolone treatment. Thus, multidisciplinary treatment may achieve long-term survival in patients with stage IVb thymic carcinoma.