Anterior and middle mediastinum paraganglioma: complete resection is the treatment of choice.

Paraganglioma of the mediastinum is described to be an indolent and slow-growing tumor. After a patient presented to our center, we reviewed the world literature to evaluate the prognosis of this tumor. This review showed that paragangliomas are locally invasive and have a high local recurrence rate (44/79 or 55.7%) with a true metastatic capacity (21/79 or 26.6%). The overall survival is 62.0% (49/79), but only 36.7% (29/79) of patients could be considered as free of disease, with survival time of 98.2 +/- 11.7 months (mean +/- standard error). The survival with a complete resection is 84.6% (125.7 +/- 18.7 months) versus 50.0% (71.5 +/- 13.8 months) for patients with a biopsy or a partial excision and adjuvant treatment (p < 0.01). We acknowledge the limitation of this retrospective study, but a prospective trial is not possible because of the rarity of the tumor. We want to emphasize that paraganglioma of the anterior and middle mediastinum is an aggressive tumor, and complete surgical resection, using cardiopulmonary bypass if necessary, is highly recommended.