Thymoma of the Left Thymic Lobe with a Contralateral Small Pleural Implant Successfully Detected with Diffusion-weighted MRI

Abstract

Thymoma is the most common primary neoplasm of the anterior mediastinum. At diagnosis, up to 40% of patients present with advanced disease. Because advanced thymomas receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy, diagnostic imaging is crucial to plan the correct treatment. For characterizing thymomas, CT is the first choice modality, whereas 18F-FDG/PET is reserved for questionable cases and MRI is not routinely employed. Hereby, we describe a case of thymoma with a single contralateral pleural implant in a 30-year-old woman. The small pleural thickening detected at CT was correctly interpreted as pleural seeding related to thymoma at diffusion-weighted (DW)-MRI after a negative 18F-FDG/PET scan, and was subsequently confirmed at surgery. Precise diagnosis and accurate preoperative staging are crucial in managing thymic epithelial tumours in order to design the appropriate treatment and improve prognosis. Indeed, when stage IVa for pleural seeding is diagnosed preoperatively, a multimodality approach including primary chemotherapy followed by surgery and postoperative radiotherapy/chemotherapy is recommended. This is the first report that used DW-MRI for the characterization of pleural seeding in thymoma and demonstrates that DW-MRI could be useful for the correct pre-operatory staging in thymoma patients, especially in cases with indeterminate pleural thickenings at CT, in order to define the correct management.