A clinical analysis was performed on 55 cases of primary mediastinal tumors proved histopathologically, either resection or biopsy, from August 1977 to November 1990, at the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Chung-nam National University Hospital.
Among 55 cases, mlae was 24 and female was 31 and ages of patients were ranged between six months and 67 years old with average 31.1 years.
The primary tumors included neurogenic tumors (41.8％), teratomas(21.8％), thymomas(14.5％), benign cysts(10.9％) and a miscellaneous group.
The posterior mediastinum was the most commonly involved site of a primary mediastinal tumor (49.1％), followed by the anterosuperior mediastinum(40.0％) and the middle mediastinum(10.9％).
The most frequent histopathologic types of the primary mediastinal tumor were teratoma and thymoma in the anterosuperior mediastinum, benign cyst and teratoma in the middle mediastinum and neurogenic tumor in the posterior mediastinum.
Malignant neoplasms were present in 11 patients(20.0％).
Symptoms were present in 63.5％ of the patients and included chest pain or discomfort(23.6％), dyspnea(14.6％), cough(7.3％), neck mass, ferquent URI and generalized weakness. 30.1％ of the lesions in symptomatic patients was malignant.
49 cases of the patients(89.1％) were treated with complete resection, two cases with partial resection and four cases were biopsied only.
Among 11 patients with malignant lesions, five patients received postoperative chemotherapy, two patients received irradiation, two patients received chemotherapy and irradiation and two patients refused further postoperative adjuvant therapy.
Postoperative complications were bleeding, Horner´s syndrome, pleural effusion and sympathetic nerve injury in five patients and there have been no surgical mortality.
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