[Surgical treatment of recurrent thymic carcinoid--a case report]

Reoperation for recurrent thymic carcinoid was performed in a 77-year-old man, who had undergone extirpation of an anterior mediastinal tumor in September 1986. The pathological diagnosis was thymic carcinoid after the first operation. An abnormal lesion was found on the chest X-ray film in November 1992. Chest CT and supraclavicular lymph node biopsy revealed that the thymic carcinoid had recurred with lymph node metastasis, so reoperation was performed in February 1993. The patient is alive with residual tumor at 11 months after reoperation. Radiotherapy or chemotherapy are not so effective for thymic carcinoid. However this type of tumor often reocurrs, it grows slowly. Accordingly, total thymectomy including tumor should be carried out for thymic carcinoid, and surgical resection is the best choice for the treatment of tumor recurrence.