Histopathological Spectrum of Mediastinal Lesions in a Tertiary Care Centre- a Two Year Retrospective Study

Abstract

Background: Mediastinal lesions are infrequent with wide histopathological spectrum which poses diagnostic difficulty to pathologists, radiologists and clinicians because of the variations in symptoms, location and accessibility. This observational, hospital-based, single center, retrospective study was aimed to determine the common anatomical location of the lesions within the mediastinum, to study the age and sex distribution of mediastinal masses and to evaluate and to further shed light on histopathological spectrum of non-neoplastic and neoplastic mediastinal masses. Methods: Between January 2018 to December 2019, 85 cases of mediastinal masses were taken into consideration. All mediastinal biopsies fixed using 10% neutral buffer formalin, processed by paraffin tissue processing and stained with haematoxylin and eosin which were retrieved from archival data. All slides were studied in detail with respect of age, sex, anatomical location and histopathological morphology. The data was entered; tabulated and statistical analysis was performed by using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 22.0). Results: A total of 85 cases of suspected mediastinal masses were taken into consideration. Most of the lesions were located in anterior mediastinum. There was a significant male preponderance. Maximum number of cases occurred in 3rd to 5th decade. Out of 85 cases, 65 cases were neoplastic in nature (76%), 11 were non neoplastic (13%) and 09 remained inconclusive (11%). Benign and malignant cases were 34 and 31 cases each respectively (40% and 37%). Conclusion: As per this study, thymoma and lymphoma were found to be the commonest benign and malignant lesions respectively. Granulomatous inflammation was the most common non-neoplastic lesion.