Thymectomy in 19 Cases of Myasthenia Gravis in 4 Years Follow up

Abstract

Myasthenia Gravis(MG) is an autoimmune disease, charcterized by weakness of voluntary muscles. It is related to thymus gland and thymectomy is preffered in treatment of MG. The aim of this study was to evaluate results of thymectomy during 4 years after operation. Twenty-five patients, who underwent thymectomy , followed for 4 years. We excluded 6 patients because they didn’t come back for evaluation. 10 cases of the patients, were male and 9 cases were female. Their age range were between 4 to 55 years and 15 cases were under 30 years old. Preoperative Osserman classification showed 17 cases were in stage II and 2 cases were ocular type and were resistant to medical therapy in stage I. In result of thymus pathology, 13 cases was reported hyperplasia and 3 cases had normal thymus, 2 cases with thymoma and one of them had lipoma in thymus . Two patients were involved myasthenic crisis, but in general 17 cases of patients showed improvement. This study showed the high efficacy of thymectomy in treatment of MG; but it is essential to perform longer study in this field

Keywords

• myasthenia gravis - surgery/ myasthenia gravis – therapy / thymectomy