Abstract
Ectopic cervical or cervico-mediastinal thymomas are very rare and most of them are asymptomatic, except for the presence of a cervical mass. We present the case of a 71-year-old man with an ectopic cervico-mediastinal thymoma threatening superior vena cava syndrome. He had a slight headache and presented with venous dilatation on the chest wall. A computed tomographic scan and magnetic resonance, imaging of the chest demonstrated a mass extending from the right neck to the hilum, that indented the trachea and compressed and displaced the brachiocephalic veins anteriorly. Under a right hemicollar incision and median sternotomy, the mass was resected en bloc together with the thymus. The resected specimen was an encapsulated mass measuring 11×7×4 cm. The pathological diagnosis was type AB, non-invasive thymoma, confirmed by 3-color flow, cytometry of tumor-derived lymphocytes. Flow cytometry using biopsy material may contribute to the preoperative diagnosis of ectopic thymoma.
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Iwasaki, T., Nakagawa, K., Yasukawa, M. et al. Ectopic cervico-mediastinal thymoma confirmed by flow cytometric analysis of tumor-derived lymphocytes. Jpn J Thorac Caridovasc Surg 54, 35–39 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02743783
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02743783