NEWS

Dear ITMIG Member,

 The Thymic Carcinoma Working Group of the International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group (ITMIG) is interested in examining

outcomes for patients with thymic carcinomas and thymomas, and particularly how radiation therapy influences those outcomes.

We would like to investigate separate thymic tumor patient populations, with the plans of our investigations leading to multiple manuscripts.  First, we would like to analyze the failure patterns and survival according to if thymic carcinoma patients receive or do not receive postoperative radiation therapy.  Second, we would like to assess outcomes of patients with thymic carcinoma or thymoma who did not undergo definitive surgical resection and  who are treated with definitive radiation therapy with or without chemotherapy.  Third, we would like to assess toxicities and outcomes of patients receiving reirradiation following locoregional recurrences of thymic malignancies. 

We greatly appreciate your institution’s previous contributions to the ITMIG retrospective database, and we would like to invite you to participate in these projects as collaborators.  For these papers, we will need more detailed information than is available in the retrospective ITMIG database, for instance on dose, fields and technique of radiation therapy, as well as sites and timings of failures.  Please let me know if you or another physician in your practice are interested in participating and able to review in detail your institution’s thymic carcinoma patients undergoing surgery with or without radiation therapy, thymoma and thymic carcinoma patients receiving definitive radiation therapy, and thymoma and thymic carcinoma patients receiving reirradiation.  If you agree, we will send out a database template in which you can compile the information for your center’s patients.

Thank you very much for your consideration, and we hope to work with you on these projects for this rare, yet difficult-to-treat malignancy.