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- Case Report -

A Resected Case of a Thymic Carcinoid with a Thymic Cyst

Ryota Sumitomo¹, Shinichi Sumitomo², Kazuya Matsumoto², Masaya Okuda², Takayuki Nakano³, Shunsuke Iimori^2
1Department of Thoracic Surgery, Shimada Municipal Hospital, Japan, ²Department of Thoracic Surgery, Japanese Red Cross Society Wakayama Medical Center, Japan, ³Department of Thoracic Surgery, Kochi Health Sciences Center, Japan

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Background. Thymic carcinoid with a thymic cyst is extremely rare. Case. An abnormal mediastinal shadow was noted in a 35-year-old man on a chest radiograph during a follow-up examination for chronic hepatitis C. Computed tomography (CT) revealed a solid tumor in the anterior mediastinum with a cystic lesion. Positron emission tomography-CT (PET-CT) showed uptake (maximum standardized uptake value: 3.95) in the tumor, which was diagnosed as well-differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma by CT-guided biopsy. The patient was referred to our hospital for surgery, which consisted of tumor resection and thymectomy through a median sternotomy. The histopathological diagnosis was atypical carcinoid of the thymus with a thymic cyst. Furthermore, metastasis to an anterior mediastinal lymph node was observed. Conclusion. We report a resected case of a thymic carcinoid with a thymic cyst, which is the first case described in the Japanese literature. It is possible that thymic carcinoid can develop from the wall of a thymic cyst.
key words: Well-differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma, Thymic atypical carcinoid, Thymic cyst

Received: July 8, 2011
Accepted: November 18, 2011

JJLC 52 (1): 39-42, 2012