P05: Low-dose radiotherapy for the treatment of pleural recurrence of thymic carcinoma.

Background Pleural recurrence is a common type of failure in some late-staged thymic carcinomas even after primary mediastinal mass is completely removed or well controlled. Generally, systemic chemotherapy would be firstly chosen by most oncologists. But it becomes challenging when chemotherapy shows no efficacy or the tumor relapses after response. In most cases, this group of patients has received high-dose radiotherapy to the mediastinal tumor bed before the pleural recurrence is confirmed. Due to normal tissue (lung, heart, etc.) dose restriction, high dose radiotherapy to the pleural lesions would be highly risky. From Nov 2011, we started trying low-dose intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) as a palliative treatment to these patients.