Journal Review in Thoracic Surgery: Health Consequences of Thymectomy in Adults

Behind The Knife: The Surgery Podcast

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Education, Science

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

Does the adult thymus have a purpose and function? Are there any long-term health effects of thymectomy? Tune in to another Swedish Thoracic surgery journal review where we discuss the recent paper out of the NEJM which reports on the health consequences of thymus removal in adults. This paper has been widely picked up by the media and our patients frequently bring it into the office. Listen as we discuss the study population, methods, and potential applications of this paper.

Learning Objectives:

- Review the purpose and function of the thymus.
- Discuss the population, methods, and results of this trial.
- Discuss the application of this paper and how it may or may not impact clinical practice for thoracic surgeons.

Hosts:

Chloe E. Hanson, MD, PGY-3
Kelly Daus MD, PGY-4
Peter White, MD, Thoracic Surgery Attending
Brian Louie, MD, Thoracic Surgery Attending

Reference Material:

Kooshesh KA, Foy BH, Sykes DB, Gustafsson K, Scadden DT. Health Consequences of Thymus Removal in Adults. N Engl J Med. 2023;389(5):406-417.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37530823/

Lin TM, Chang YS, Hou TY, et al. Risk of incident autoimmune diseases in patients with thymectomy. Ann Clin Transl Neurol. 2020;7(7):1072-1082.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32478484/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Behind the surgery podcast, relevant and engaging content designed to help you dominate the day.
0:13.0	Hello and welcome back to another journal review in thoracic surgery with your Swedish
0:26.1	thoracic surgery team. I'm Chloe Janssen, I'm a third year general surgery resident currently
0:30.4	in my research year here is Swedish and I am joined by my co-host
0:33.6	PGY4 Dr. Doss and our attendings Dr. Brian Louie and Dr. Peter White.
0:37.8	Hi everybody I agree to be back. Today in Journal of Medicine we'll be
0:42.2	discussing a paper out of the New in Journal of Medicine discussing the health
0:45.4	consequences of phymectomy and adults published in August of 2023.
0:49.8	Yeah I chose this paper for this podcast, even though it's not necessarily a surgical paper,
0:56.0	because it was published by a medical group primarily in Hymunk and Regenerative Medicine,
1:01.0	but it was picked up quite widely by the media.
1:03.4	If you look at their citations, over a hundred different media outlets picked it up.
1:07.0	And because of that, it sparked a lot of interest with our patients, and we've had several
1:11.5	patients, both with Brian and myself bring the paper into clinic and ask if they're getting a total or a partial thymectomy and asked about the results of this paper.
1:20.5	So we figured it'd be a great one to discuss so we can talk about some of the
1:23.9	potentially concerning findings and highlight some of the things that the paper does that may make
1:29.8	some of their results less relevant to our surgical populations and but may give us some
1:36.0	better long-term health outcomes to counsel thumbactomy patients.
1:41.1	You know that's true Peter we've there's been a number of patients here wanting to talk about the the paper and the consequences of that thymectomy.
1:47.0	But as you know the congenital heart disease literature that we've seen the effects of removing the thymus and children.
1:53.2	We've known about that for a while.
1:55.2	The thymus is critical for the normal development of the immune system.
	...

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