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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2003;125:741
© 2003 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Letters to the Editor

Reply

Peter F. Roberts, MDa, John R. Benfield, MDa, Federico Venuta, MDb

Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, UC Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, CA 95817a, University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Cattedra di Chirurgia Toracica\Policlincio, Umberto I, Rome, 00161, Italyb

Reply to the Editor:

We appreciate the comments by Lucchi and colleagues at the University of Pisa. Their results are consistent with ours, but they differ in one important respect. In their group of 29 patients, 23 were operated on because of thymomas or suspected thymic masses, and 3 had thymectomies because nonoperative therapy had been ineffective or was not tolerated. This suggests that only 3 of their 29 patients had thymectomies specifically for the treatment of ocular myasthenia gravis (OMG), whereas OMG was the indication for operation in all of our patients. Our findings, supported by those of Lucchi and associates and the University of Pennsylvania group,Go 1 strongly suggest that thymectomy achieves greater remission rates for OMG than for more advanced forms of myasthenia gravis. Thus we recommend operation as the primary treatment for OMG when the diagnosis is firm.

Reference

  1. Sharger JB, Deeb ME, Mick R, et al. Transcervical thymectomy achieves results comparable to median sternotomy in the treatment of myasthenia gravis. Ann Thorac Surg. 2002;74:320-6[Abstract/Free Full Text]




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