Study Concludes Surgery Benefits Myasthenia Gravis Patients

Gil I. Wolfe, MD

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine addresses a question doctors have sought to clarify for decades: whether a surgery conducted since the 1940s benefits the patients it targets.

The study to be published August 11 (available online on August 10 at 5 p.m.) found that surgical removal of the thymus gland from patients with myasthenia gravis, a rare autoimmune disease that affects neuromuscular function, provides significant benefit in patients who do not have a chest tumor.

Myasthenia gravis (MG) results from an immune-mediated