Thymoma is the most common primary tumor of the anterior mediastinum while congenital thymic cysts are rare lesions mostly detected asymptomatically in the first decade of life . This is a study of the experience of mansoura university hospital in the surgical treatment of thymic masses.
From June 1979 till June 2001, 34 patients with thymic masses were studied. 21 patients were males "61.8%" and 13 females "38.2%". The age ranged from 2 to 60 years with a mean age of 34.94 years.
The symptomatic presentation was variable, where 10 cases had myas-thenia gravis MG, 11 had dypsnea with or without chest pain, 1 had cervical LN, 2 had SVC obstruction, and 4 were asymptomatic.
The mass was approached through median stemotomy in 32 cases, Left thoracotomy in one, and the remaining case had no operation & diagnosed by cervical LN biopsy as Hodgkin lymphoma. Total thymecto-my was done in 29 cases, large piece of pericardium was excised with total thymectomy in 2, total thymectomy & wedge resection of left upper lobe in one, one case was inoperable due to infiltration of SVC & heart.
According to Masaoka clinical staging we had 16 in stage I, 6 in stage II, 4 in stage III, 2 in stage IVa. We had 28 cases of thymoma, 16 were benign, 6 were atypical & 6 were thymic carcinoma. We had 4 cases with congenital thymic cysts . One case was thymolipoma in the second decade of life . One child had Hodgkin lymphoma with thymic enlargement. The correlation was significant be-