CASE N°18 – Thymic Carcinoma

Clinical History:

Age: 71

Sex: Male

Physical examination: Cough that doesn’t go away, chest pain and trouble breathing.

CT-SCAN: large and highly aggressive anterior mediastinal mass about 10x5x3 cm in diameter.

Cytological Images:

Cytological material: ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration

Cytological Report:

Positive for malignancy. Histological verification is raccomended to estabilish the final diagnosis.

Histological Images:

Histological material: mediastinotomy

Histological Report:

Thymic Carcinoma, basaloid subtype.

Note: I was unable to show immunocytochemistry pictures, trust me when i say that CD5, c-kit, synaptofisin, chromogranin, CD56, CD99 were according to the histological diagnosis.

Discussion:

There are different types of tumors of the thymus. Thymomas and thymic carcinomas are rare tumors of the cells that are on the outside surface of the thymus. The tumor cells in a thymoma look similar to the normal cells of the thymus, grow slowly, and rarely spread beyond the thymus. On the other hand, the tumor cells in a thymic carcinoma look very different from the normal cells of the thymus, grow more quickly, and have usually spread to other parts of the body when the cancer is found. Thymic carcinoma is more difficult to treat than thymoma.