Primary mediastinal tumors Clinicopathological evaluation of 50 patients

ABSTRACT

This paper presents various surgical and pathological problems of primary mediastinal tumors in 50 patients seen and managed during a period of 5 years. Twenty were women. The ages ranged from 9 months to 60 years. Ten patients included in this study were asymptomatic, the presenting symptoms in the remaining patients were diverse depending primarily on the nature of the lesions, their location and size. The various diagnostic procedures used could only characterize the lesion, the exact diagnosis however was established at operation and confirmed histologically in all of the patients. There were 16 seperate varieties, and 62% of the lesions were found to be malignant. Our experience in diagnostic evaluation and operative management is described and discussed