Non-surgical treatment of locally advanced thymic epithelial tumors—a need for multicenter trials

Thymic epithelial tumors (TET) are rare neoplasms that usually occur in the prevascular mediastinum. Complete resection has been shown to be a favorable prognostic parameter for TET (1-4). Resectability of these tumors usually depends on their size and stage with reported rates of complete resection ranging between 100% for Masaoka stage I and 0–78% for stage IV tumors (1,3).