A case of metaplastic thymoma

A 40-year-old woman had an abnormal shadow on a chest radiograph. A computed tomography scan showed a well-circumscribed anterior mediastinal tumor with heterogeneous enhancement with a longitudinal diameter of 59 mm, and fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) showed abnormal accu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of the Japanese Association for Chest Surgery Vol. 26; no. 7; pp. 776 - 781
Main Authors Arimura, Takaaki, Sakaizawa, Takao, Nishimura, Hideki, Hamanaka, Kazutoshi, Yoshida, Kazuo, Amano, Jun
Format Journal Article
LanguageJapanese
Published The Japanese Association for Chest Surgery 15.11.2012
Subjects
mediastinal tumor
metaplastic thymoma
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Summary:A 40-year-old woman had an abnormal shadow on a chest radiograph. A computed tomography scan showed a well-circumscribed anterior mediastinal tumor with heterogeneous enhancement with a longitudinal diameter of 59 mm, and fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) showed abnormal accumulation. The tumor was diagnosed as type A or type B thymoma by needle biopsy. The patient underwent resection via a median sternotomy. Pathological examination revealed a characteristic biphasic architecture consisting of islands of epithelioid cells and surrounding bundles of spindle cells. Immunohistochemical staining showed that while the epithelial cells were strongly positive for cytokeratin, the spindle cells were weakly positive. The final diagnosis of the patient's condition was metaplastic thymoma. We report a rare case of metaplastic thymoma.
ISSN:0919-0945
1881-4158
DOI:10.2995/jacsurg.26.776