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World J Clin Cases. Dec 16, 2015; 3(12): 980-983
Published online Dec 16, 2015. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v3.i12.980
Myasthenia gravis and thymic neoplasms: A brief review
Ritesh Kumar
Ritesh Kumar, Department of Radiotherapy, BRAIRCH, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India
Author contributions: Kumar R contributed to concept and design literature review.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declares no potential conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Ritesh Kumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Radiotherapy, BRAIRCH, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110029, India. riteshkr9@gmail.com
Telephone: +91-98-14056719
Received: April 22, 2015
Peer-review started: April 30, 2015
First decision: June 24, 2015
Revised: September 8, 2015
Accepted: October 12, 2015
Article in press: October 13, 2015
Published online: December 16, 2015
Processing time: 230 Days and 8.9 Hours
Abstract

Thymoma is the most common mediastinal tumor. They have varied presentation ranging from asymptomatic incidental mediastinal masses to locally extensive tumor with compressive symptoms and distant metastases. They have frequent association with various paraneoplastic syndromes (PNS). The most common PNS associated with thymoma is myasthenia gravis (MG). Patients of thymoma with MG have a favourable outcome due to early disclosure of the disease. Histologically they are classified into five subtypes and Masaoka-Koga staging system is used for staging. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy play an important role along with anti-myasthenia drugs. This review would like to highlight the association of thymoma with MG and associated clinical and therapeutic issues.

Keywords: Thymoma; Myasthenia gravis; Surgery; Radiotherapy; Chemotherapy

Core tip: This article is a comprehensive review of literature of a rare neoplasm. This article outlines the various newer details of diagnosis, staging and treatment aspects of thymoma and myasthenia gravis (MG). The importance of association between thymoma and MG is reviewed in detail.