Abstract
Mucinous adenocarcinoma of the thymus is a particularly rare type among thymic carcinomas. Here, we report a patient who underwent complete surgical resection of the primary mucinous adenocarcinoma of the thymus. She was 74 years old and presented with a 60-mm multilocular cystic tumor in her right anterior mediastinum. We performed extended thymo-thymectomy with partial resection of the right upper lobe and pathologically diagnosed the patient with Masaoka stage II mucinous adenocarcinoma of the thymus. Immunohistochemistry showed the absence of PD-L1, suggesting that immune check point inhibitors targeting PD-1/PD-L1 might not be effective in this case. The increased preoperative serum levels of CA19-9 decreased after the operation. CA19-9 is a biomarker for disease status. Future reports should help elucidate the pathogenesis of this disease.
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We thank M. Futakuchi for technical support and discussion.
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This work was supported in part by the NIH (grant number R01CA240317), Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (GAP funding to Y.M.).
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K.T., Takuro M., and T.N. were involved in the design and conception of the study. Takamune M., R.D., R.M., S.M., and Takuro M. were involved with perioperative care and interpreted the data. K.T., Takuro M., K.M., T.T., Y.M., and T.N. reviewed and revised the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Tomoshige, K., Tsuchiya, T., Matsumoto, K. et al. Primary Mucinous Adenocarcinoma of the Thymus: a Rare Type of Thymic Carcinoma—Case Report. SN Compr. Clin. Med. 3, 1233–1237 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42399-021-00839-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42399-021-00839-x