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Shortly before his death in 1995, Kenneth B. Schwartz, a cancer patient at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), founded The Kenneth B. Schwartz Center at MGH. The Schwartz Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and advancing compassionate health care delivery, which provides hope to the patient and support to caregivers and encourages the healing process. The center sponsors the Schwartz Center Rounds, a monthly multidisciplinary forum where caregivers reflect on important psychoso- cial issues faced by patients, their families, and their caregivers, and gain insight and support from fellow staff members.

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Thymomas and thymic carcinoma are rare neoplasms. Surgical resection is the cornerstone of effective therapy. Stage I disease is effectively treated by complete surgical resection. The role of radiation therapy in completely resected stage II disease remains controversial. Adjuvant radiation therapy is useful for local control and may improve survival in patients with incompletely resected tumours. Cisplatin-based chemotherapy regimens play an important role in the treatment of advanced stage III/IV or recurrent disease thymomas, but have proven less effective for thymic carcinoma. Phase II trials of multimodality therapy incorporating neoadjuvant chemotherapy, surgery and postoperative radiation therapy show promise for unresectable disease. This review discusses recent clinical data and the potential role for agents targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor, angiogenesis and apoptotic pathways.Read More →