Impact of adjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy on thymoma

Purpose

Thymoma is a rare tumour. The most common treatment for thymoma is surgical resection, while the use of radiotherapy and chemotherapy remains controversial.

Patients and methods

We conducted a monocentric observational study of 31 patients diagnosed with thymoma from June 2004 to July 2020 at cancer centre in Strasbourg, France. We analysed the outcomes of the patients.

Results

The 2- and 5- year locoregional relapse-free survival rates were 96.3% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 76.5–99.5%) and 68.0% (95% CI: 43.8–83.5%), respectively. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy significantly improved local tumour control (P = 0.0008 and 0.04, respectively), while a larger initial tumour size significantly worsened local control rates (P = 0.04). The 5- and 10-year overall survival rates were 87.1% (95% CI: 69.2–95%) and 81.7% (95% CI: 60.3–92.2%), respectively. The median overall survival was not reached, and no favourable factor was retrieved. For relapsed patients, the median overall survival after relapse was 115 months.

Conclusion

Despite the inherent limitations of retrospective studies with a limited patient sample size, we demonstrated that chemotherapy and radiotherapy in addition to surgery were effective in achieving local control and contributed to improving patient outcomes in thymoma. Notably, an aggressive treatment strategy at the time of relapse resulted in favourable outcomes for retreated patients.