Abstract 123P
Background
The objective of this study was to characterize thymoma and thymic carcinoma patients over a 15-year period including their demographics, treatment and overall survival.
Methods
We used data of patients with thymic epithelial tumors diagnosed between 2002 and 2016 from the Munich cancer registry. Data included information on age, sex, histological subtype, Masaoka stage, therapy and survival. We calculated means with standard deviation to report numeric variables and absolute and relative frequencies to report categorical variables. To analyze trends in time we used univariate linear regression. We used Kaplan-Meier method to describe univariate survival, and multivariate cox regression analysis to find factors associated with survival.
Results
Overall, our dataset contained 150 patients with thymoma (Ty) and 91 patients with thymic carcinoma (TC). Absolute numbers peaked in 2009 and decreased afterwards in both groups. Mean age was 57.9 years in Ty, and 61.1 in TC, the proportion of males was 51.3% and 62.2% respectively. 84% of Ty patients and 54% of TC patients underwent surgical removal of the tumor. Apart from an increasing proportion of thymectomies we did not find specific trends in therapy over time. Increasing age was significantly associated with worse survival outcomes in Ty (HR=1.05, p-value=0.0004) and TC (HR=1.03, p=0.01). In Ty surgery (HR=0.17, p=0.002) or bimodal therapy (HR=0.20, p=0.01) were significantly associated with a survival benefit vs. no therapy, but chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy was not (HR=1.61, p=0.53). In patients with TC only bimodal therapy was associated with survival benefits compared to no therapy (HR=0.31, p=0.01).
Conclusions
Although numbers are small, thymic epithelial tumors represent a tumor entity with a need for innovations in therapy. Therapy did not change over time so far, and survival outcomes have not improved significantly. Especially in patients with thymic carcinomas survival is still limited.
Clinical trial identification
Editorial acknowledgement
Legal entity responsible for the study
The authors.
Funding
Has not received any funding.
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.