Abstract
Generally early surgical extirpation is considered to be beneficial for the treatment of mediastinal tumors and prevention of its complication. The review of the clinical course, histopathologic characteristics and current diagnostic and treatment modalities will help us to decide when to treat and how to treat mediastinal tumors. For this purpose clinical analysis of the 42 patients who were surgically treated from July 1984 to August 1993 in the Chung Ang University Hospital is done in this report. There were 24 males and 18 females[1.3:1], and their age ranged from 1 year to 75 years. Nonspecific symptoms such as chest pain, cough and dyspnea were the most frequently encountered symptoms. Asymptomatic patients were relatively common[21.4%]. The tumors were found most frequently in the posterior mediastinum[45.2%]. Anterior mediastinum was the next and middle and upper mediastinum showed relatively rare occurrence of the tumor. Neurogenic tumor was the most common histopathologic type . Germ cell tumor, benign cyst and thymoma followed it. Curative resection was possible in 27 patients[64%], partial resection in 6 patients[14.3%]and just open biopsy in 7 patients[16.7%]. There was no early operative mortality. Postoperative complications were occurred in 5 patients[11.9%] and most of them were not serious.