Chinese guideline for clinical diagnosis and treatment of thymic epithelial tumors (2021 Edition)

Abstract

Thymic tumor is a relatively rare type of thoracic cancer, which is pathologically-classified as thymic epithelial tumors by World Health Organization (WHO), including thymoma and thymic carcinoma. The incidence of thymic epithelial tumors in China is about 4.09 per million, which is slightly higher than that in European and American countries. For surgically-resectable thymic epithelial tumors, complete resection with or without postoperative radiotherapy or chemotherapy is preferred. For advanced unresectable disease, conventional radiotherapy and chemotherapy is the mainstream treatment but lack of standard first-line and second-line regimens. In recent years, targeted drugs and the immune checkpoint inhibitors have gradually exhibited certain therapeutic prospect in this subset of tumor. Since there was no guideline regarding thymic epithelial tumor released in China, Multidisciplinary Committee on Oncology, Chinese Physicians Association analyze, summarize and discuss the relevant research data for the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of thymic epithelial tumors, and formulate the "Chinese guidelines for clinical diagnosis and treatment of thymic epithelial tumors (2021 Edition)" for clinicians' reference.