A multicenter retrospective study conducted in Italy on 213 patients with autoimmune myasthenia operated on between 2011 and 2021 for a thymoma, advanced stage (Masaoka-Koga III or IV) for 24 of them, shows that:
- 110 had an open thymectomy (sternotomy or lateral or posterolateral thoracotomy), the others a robot-assisted thymectomy;
- open surgery was associated with a shorter operative time but a higher number of postoperative complications (20% vs. 14.6%) and a longer hospital stay (7.5 days vs. 5.5).
Long-term follow-up, averaging 58 months, showed no significant difference in neurological or oncological outcomes, demonstrating the safety of robot-assisted thymectomy even for the most advanced thymomas.
