Thymic Neuroendocrine Tumors
- 1 June 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) in Annals of Surgery
- Vol. 251 (6), 1117-1121
- https://doi.org/10.1097/sla.0b013e3181dd4ec4
Abstract
Introduction: Thymic neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are uncommon but malignant tumors of the thymus gland that are usually associated with systemic symptoms due to hypersecretion of biogenic amines from metastatic lesions. Due to the limited number of studies in the literature, very little is known about progress or trends made in the treatment and survival of patients with thymic NET. Methods: We reviewed 160 patients diagnosed with thymic NET in the SEER database to evaluate patient demographics and their clinical course. Specifically, we evaluated the role of surgery and adjuvant radiation in the SEER cohort. We also performed univariable and multivariate Cox proportional hazard modeling of standard prognostic factors. Results: According to our results, thymic NETs afflict males and whites primarily. As expected, advanced stage correlates with poorer long-term survival (P = 0.009) and those patients who undergo surgery do better than their counterpart (P = 0.005). We did not observe any survival benefit for radiation delivered as a part of primary therapy. Univariable and multivariate analyses demonstrated that tumor stage (P = 0.009), grade (P = 0.002), surgical resection (P = 0.005), and tumor size (P = 0.02) correlated with overall survival. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that surgery continues to be the mainstay of treatment, and that there is a need to define a staging system for thymic NETs that can perhaps allow clinicians to formulate better therapeutic strategies for such patients.Keywords
This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit:
- One Hundred Years After “Carcinoid”: Epidemiology of and Prognostic Factors for Neuroendocrine Tumors in 35,825 Cases in the United StatesJournal of Clinical Oncology, 2008
- Molecular targeted therapy for carcinoid and islet-cell carcinomaBest Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2007
- Current Status of Gastrointestinal CarcinoidsGastroenterology, 2005
- A Clinicopathologic Study of 12 Neuroendocrine Tumors Arising in the ThymusChest, 2003
- The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Results Program Database as a Resource for Conducting Descriptive Epidemiologic and Clinical StudiesJournal of Clinical Oncology, 2003
- Neuroendocrine Carcinomas (Carcinoid Tumor) of the ThymusAmerican Journal of Clinical Pathology, 2000
- MULTIVARIABLE PROGNOSTIC MODELS: ISSUES IN DEVELOPING MODELS, EVALUATING ASSUMPTIONS AND ADEQUACY, AND MEASURING AND REDUCING ERRORSStatistics in Medicine, 1996
- Pulmonary and Thymic Carcinoid TumorsWorld Journal of Surgery, 1996
- Neuroendocrine Neoplasms of the ThymusPathology - Research and Practice, 1988
- Primary mediastinal carcinoid tumorsThe American Journal of Surgical Pathology, 1982