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Vol.58 No.1 contents | Japanese/English |
 | Full Text of PDF (407K) Article in Japanese |
- Invited Review Article -
A Japanese Nationwide Retrospective Database of Thymic Epithelial Tumors Constructed by the Japanese Association for Research on the Thymus (JART)
Meinoshin Okumura11Department of General Thoracic Surgery, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan
Although the Masaoka clinicopathological staging system for thymoma has been adopted globally since it was presented in 1982, some modifications or revision have been necessary due to changes and progress in clinical practice and basic research on thymic epithelial tumors. The International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group (ITMIG) was established in 2010 with the aim of leading international research activities. The ITMIG attempted to construct a global database to build on the TNM classification system to establish a new staging system for thymic epithelial tumors. The Japanese Association for Research on the Thymus (JART) started a nationwide retrospective database project and collected 3033 cases from 32 institutes, and contributed to the ITMIG database, which consisted of 10808 cases. The TNM classification was presented after an analysis by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), and final approval by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). A total of 8 research projects using the JART retrospective database have been completed.
key words: Thymoma, Thymic carcinoma, Thymic neuroendocrine tumor, Japanese nationwide database
JJLC 58 (1): 2-7, 2018
