Purpose: We assessed the utility of the tumor doubling time (TDT) for predicting the histological type of thymic epithelial tumors.
Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 130 patients with thymic epithelial tumors who underwent computed tomography two or more times before surgery. The patients were divided into low-risk thymoma (types A, AB and B1), high-risk thymoma (types B2 and B3) and thymic carcinoma (thymic carcinoma and thymic neuroendocrine tumor) groups. In the 96 patients who showed tumor enlargement, the relationship between the histological type and the TDT of the tumor was investigated.
Results: The study population included 55 men and 41 women from 26 to 82 years of age. The TDT of the thymic carcinoma group (median 205 days) was significantly shorter in comparison to the low-risk thymoma (median 607 days) and high-risk thymoma (median 459 days) groups. No significant differences were observed between the low-risk thymoma and high-risk thymoma groups. When we set the cutoff time for differentiating thymic carcinoma group from thymoma at 313 days, the sensitivity and specificity were 83.8% and 82.1%, respectively.
Conclusions: The TDT is a useful parameter for differentiating between thymoma and thymic carcinoma group.
Keywords: Computed tomography; Histological type; Thymic epithelial tumors; Tumor doubling time.