International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group Standard Definitions, Policies, and Reporting Measures for Thymic Epithelial Tumors.

Thymic epithelial tumors are rare diseases, with frequently indolent nature. A common language is essential for accurate communication in clinical management and research for this disease. The International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group updates its original set of standards for reporting outcome measures of clinical studies to facilitate comparison of results between studies and to promote collaborative research of the disease. These standards include international classification of tumor stage, long-term outcome measures with follow-up policy, standard definitions of recurrence and progression, and reporting measures for surgery and multimodality therapy. Implementing these renewed standards will support more accurate study designs, result reporting, and cross-specialty discussions and will facilitate multi-institutional and global collaboration.