Treatment and prognosis of Masaoka stage 3 thymic carcinoma: a retrospective study of 32 cases

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to investigate the treatment and prognostic factors in patients with Masaoka stage 3 thymic carcinoma. METHODS: A retrospective review was conducted of the medical records of patients with Masaoka stage 3 thymic carcinoma between 2000 and 2012 in our institution. Clinical characteristics and prognostic factors were analyzed. Survival curves were plotted using the Kaplan–Meier method. The Cox proportional hazard model was used for multivariate analysis. RESULTS: Thirty-two patients with Masaoka stage 3 thymic carcinoma, operated on in Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, were identified between 2000 and 2012. Among 32 patients, 24 achieved R0 resection. The most common histological subtypes were squamous cell carcinoma (n=15, 46.8%), followed by undifferentiated carcinoma (n=12, 37.5%), and other tumors (n=5, 15.7%). The 5-year disease-free survival and overall survival rates were 56.8% and 61.5%, respectively. Patients with incomplete resection had a significantly worse disease-free survival and overall survival as compared to complete resection with univariate analyses (P-value 0.006 and 0.034, respectively). Multivariate analysis revealed that complete resection was statistically associated with disease-free survival but not overall survival (P-value 0.025 and 0.076, respectively). CONCLUSION: Our results indicated that complete resection could impact the disease-free survival of patients with stage 3 thymic carcinoma.