Objective To summarize the clinical experience of 38 cases of cardiac surgery with full sternotomy through minimal skin incision.Methods A total of 38 cases of selective cardiac surgery were performed from June 2004 to December 2005.The operation was conducted under full sternotomy through a skin mini-incision.Results The operation was successfully completed in all the 38 cases.The total operation time was 175~359 min(mean,84 min),the drainage volume was 110~760 ml(median,380 ml),and the postoperatine hospital stay,7~32 d(mean,10 d).Postoperative short-term complications included 1 case of arrhythmia and 2 cases of pyrexia,all of which were cured.No thoracotomy for hemostasis was required.The incision healed by first intention without infection or separation.Follow-up examinations for 3~18 months(mean,9 months) in 38 cases showed significat improrement of symptoms.The left ventricular ejection fraction after operation was 0.45~0.73(mean,0.62).Conclusions Full sternotomy through minimal skin incision for cardiac surgery is safe and micro-traumatic.This procedure provides advantages of simplicity of performance,no need of special surgical instruments,and good cosmetic outcomes.

Objective To investigation the clinical characteristics in myasthenia gravis (MG)patients with thymomas.Methods A total of 856 MG patients admitted to the department during 2008.7-2010.12 were reviewed retrospectively.The patients with MG were divided into two groups based on thymic pathology,which were 162 cases with thymoma and 694 cases without thymoma.We compared the different clinical features including the gender,age of onset,MG symptoms and the incidence rate of myasthenia crisis.And the relationship between the WHO types,Maosaoka stages of thymoma and the severe of MG was also studied.Results The percentage of thymoma-associated MG patients was 18.9 percent of hospitalized MG patients at the same period.Of the 162 thymoma-associated patients,94 were male and 68 were female,with a ratio of 1.38∶1 and a mean age of (42.9 ± 12.4)years old.Thymoma was more frequent in middle-old aged patients than in children.Compared with non-thymoma MG,more thymomatous patients showed generalised MG,but not only ocular muscles weakness (90.1％ vs 62.4％,P ＜ 0.001 ).There were significant differences of the incidence rate of myasthenic crisis in the two groups ( 14.8％ vs 2.3％ ).(2)WHO type B2 and Maosaoka Ⅰ,Ⅱ thymoma were the commonest types among all potentially MG-associated thymoma.No differences of Osserman MG classification was found in thymomatous patients with different pathologic changes.Conclusions The thymomatous MG patients had its distinctive clinical features:thymomas occured in about 19.7％ of MG patients with more men than women,more common in generalized,higher incidence of myasthenia crisis,with B2 type thymic pathology and Maosaoka Ⅰ,Ⅱstages.No correlation was found between pathologic and clinical stagcs.

Objective To evaluate the therapeutic effects of thymectomy in myasthenia gravis (MG) patients with thymoma.Methods A total of 178 MG patients with thymectomy between July 2008 and December 2010 were included.All the subjects were received either cyclophosphamide alone or in combination with radiotherapeutic treatment after surgery.The MG absolute and relative clinical scores were used to assess the effectiveness of long-term trcatments.Clinical evaluations were conducted before,and at 1,6,12 and 24 months after operation.A comparative analysis on the inter-relationships among MG clinical presentation,WHO histology aud Masaoka stage was also conducted.Results (1) Of the 178 thymomapatients,103 were male and 75 were female,with a mean age of (43.7 ± 12.5)-years old.One hundred and twelve cases were taken cyclophosphamide,and 58 cases with invasive thymoma (stages Ⅱ,Ⅲ and Ⅳ or WHO type B3) were taken cyclophosphamide in combination with radiotherapy.Five patients refused cyclophosphamide or radiotherapy and 3 did not finish treatment.(2) The muscular strength improved obviously in 32.8％ (58/177) of the patients after 1 month after thymectomy,and 59.8％ (101/169),69.7％ (115/165) and 81.5％ (132/162) after 6 months,1 year and 2 years,respectively with MG score for disease severity decreased significantly with time.(3) No significant differences of the improvement rates were observed in patients within different WHO histology category.However,the rates were much higher in patients with Masaoka stage Ⅰ (91.4％) and stage Ⅱ (89.8％) than those in patients with stage Ⅲ (45.5％) and Ⅳ(28.6％) (all P＜0.001).Conclusions The remission rate of MG patients with thymomas increase after thymectomy plus cyclophosphamide or in combination with radiotherapy and reached 81.5％ after 2 years.The remission rate is associated with Masaoka stagc,but not with WHO histology.