Introduction: Thymic carcinomas are very rare tumors with often extrathoracic metastasis to other organs. But it is widely known that thymic cancers are rarely metastasis to the spine. So the prognosis, treatment and natural course of this disease are not yet standardized.

Methods: We describe 7 thymic cancer patients with spinal metastasis, they were diagnosed and treated in our institute from January 2008 to December 2011.We performed surgical treatment and adjuvant treatment, either chemotherapy or radiation therapy, in consideration of individual disease course. And we regularly followed-up the patients.

Results: Mean age of 7 patients at surgery was 53.86 ± 4.21 years old, and mean follow up period was 207.28 ± 131.65 days. Of 7 patients, 6 had metastases at thoracic spine, and 1 had metastases at lumbar spine. Extradural lesion was found in 5 patients, and 2 patients had both extradural and intradural lesions. After surgery, their mean survival was 397.86 ± 244.62 days and the median survival was 204 ± 111.425 days. Four patients had died for different reasons during follow-up periods. We described 2 cases of our patients on this report.

Conclusions: Because metastasis to the spine from thymic carcinoma is a very rare, there is no treatment guidelines. But we suggest that appropriate surgical management to the metastatic lesion is nessesary for the patient’s quality of life during the survival.

Patient Care: I will collect more cases of patients with spinal metastasis of thymic carcinoma. If I accumulate over 30 cases at our institute, I will reserch the natural history and effective treatment modalities through the data. I sincerely hope to announce our results through the CNS meeting in future.

Learning Objectives: By the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to : 1) be considered in the differential diagnosis in patients who have developed spine metastasis and be known the natural history of spinal metastasis in thymic carcinoma. 2) discuss the individual experience in the spinal metastasis of thymic carcinoma, 3) identify an effective treatment for patient's quality of life.

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