Maximal thymectomy for myasthenia gravis

Abstract

Maximal thymectomy was carried out in 48 patients with myasthenia gravis (MG). There were 18 males and 30 females. Thymic hyperplasia was found in 38, and atrophic thymus in 8, patients. Two patients had thymoma. In the non-thymomatous myasthenia gravis complete remission was achieved in 16 patients (34.8%) and pharmacological remission in 20 patients (43.5%) thus giving a total remission in 36 (78.3%) patients. Six patients (13%) improved. There was no improvement in four patients. Thus, the overall benefit from thymectomy was 91.4% in this series. We found that sex, age at onset of disease and steroid therapy influenced the outcome of thymectomy. On the other hand, duration of disease, anti-acetylcholine receptor (AntiAchR) antibodies and thymic histology did not have any bearing on the complete remission rate.