The central problem the researchers set out to address is one of the most persistent puzzles in immunology: why does the capacity to mount new immune responses fade with age? Immune checkpoint blockade, one of the most transformative advances in modern oncology, depends entirely on the immune system’s ability to recognize tumor antigens and respond to them. When that recognition machinery weakens, immunotherapies lose much of their power. Yet the biological reasons for this decline have remained incompletely understood. Complicating the picture further, biological women and men show substantial differences in cancer incidence, immune function, and responses to immunotherapy, but how biological sex interacts with the aging process itself has been largely unexplored at the mechanistic level.

To dissect this question, the team built a multi-layered experimental strategy. In female and male mice, they tracked changes across the lifespan in three key components of anti-cancer immunity: the lymph nodes, the thymus, and the population of naive CD8 T cells. The thymus is the organ where T cells develop and mature before being released into circulation, while naive CD8 T cells are newly formed cytotoxic lymphocytes that have not yet encountered a threat and stand ready to recognize novel antigens, including those displayed by tumor cells. The researchers then tested how age- and sex-related changes in these components affected the recognition and control of melanoma cells in experimental models. Crucially, they complemented the mouse work with human imaging and immune-cell datasets to determine whether the same patterns hold in people.

The results revealed a striking sex-biased divergence in how the immune system ages. In male mice, naive CD8 T cells were lost earlier in life than in females, and this loss was accompanied by an earlier contraction of lymph node size. Lymph nodes are the anatomical staging grounds where T cells survey antigen-presenting cells, so their shrinkage has direct functional consequences: fewer naive T cells were locally available to scan for tumor antigens, and the anti-cancer immune responses that depend on that surveillance were correspondingly impaired. In other words, the study links a structural change, the physical contraction of lymph nodes, to a cellular change, the depletion of naive CD8 T cells, and finally to a clinical consequence, compromised antigen recognition during middle age.

Perhaps the most consequential finding concerns the thymus and its suppression by male sex hormones. When the researchers temporarily reduced the suppressive effects of androgens on the thymus in middle-aged male mice, the organ’s output of new T cells rebounded. This replenished the pool of naive CD8 T cells within the lymph nodes, improved the recognition of tumor cells, and enhanced the response to immune checkpoint blockade. The experiment demonstrates that the age-related decline in anti-cancer immunity is not an irreversible feature of aging but a process that can, at least in principle, be partially reversed by intervening at the right biological node. It also provides a mechanistic explanation for why male mice, and potentially male patients, might show earlier erosion of the immune machinery that immunotherapies rely upon.

The human data lent substantial support to the mouse findings. Differences in lymph node size between the sexes, age-related shrinkage of the thymus, and declines in naive CD8 T cell populations all appeared in human datasets in patterns consistent with the experimental results. This cross-species concordance matters because it suggests the mechanism is not an artifact of laboratory mouse models but a feature of human immune biology. For clinicians, it raises the possibility that measurable indicators of thymic function, lymph node architecture, or naive T cell abundance could eventually serve as biomarkers for assessing a patient’s capacity to generate new anti-cancer immune responses before treatment begins.

The real-world implications extend to individualized treatment decisions. If age and sex shape the immune environment in ways that influence cancer outcomes and immunotherapy responses, then understanding a patient’s immune aging profile could help clinicians predict who is likely to benefit from checkpoint blockade and who might need combination strategies or alternative approaches. Rather than treating all patients with the same immunotherapy expectations, oncologists could one day factor in the state of the thymus and the naive T cell compartment, tailoring interventions to the immune system the patient actually has rather than an assumed average.

The study also contributes to a growing reassessment of the thymus itself. For decades, the prevailing view held that the thymus becomes largely irrelevant after childhood, gradually shrinking into functional obscurity. Recent work from the Scadden Lab and the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Program at Mass General Brigham has challenged that assumption, showing that thymic health in adults is associated with overall health and with outcomes from cancer immunotherapy. Related findings suggest that protecting the thymus during cancer therapy can improve patient outcomes. The new study adds a mechanistic layer to this emerging picture by demonstrating how continued thymic output helps maintain the pool of naive T cells available in lymph nodes to recognize cancer antigens throughout adulthood.

This reframing carries significant conceptual weight. The adult thymus is no longer viewed simply as an organ in decline but as a potential determinant of immune competence across the lifespan, and, by extension, a target for future strategies aimed at preserving or restoring anti-cancer immunity. The finding that a short period of thymic regeneration in middle-aged mice was sufficient to improve tumor recognition and checkpoint blockade response hints at therapeutic windows that could be exploited clinically, whether through hormonal modulation, thymus-protective measures during cancer treatment, or other approaches that sustain T cell production into later life.

The research, published under the title ‘Lymph node contraction links sex-biased naive CD8 T cell decline to compromised antigen recognition during middle age,’ was supported by the German Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Heart-Lung Foundation of Sweden, and the Swedish Research Council, with additional support through the MGH Research Scholars Program from the Rullo Family. The authors reported no relevant financial disclosures. As the field moves forward, the study stands as a reminder that the immune system’s relationship with cancer is shaped by biology that begins far upstream of the tumor itself, in the organs and architectures that sustain the body’s capacity to recognize what does not belong. Understanding how that capacity erodes differently in men and women may prove essential to making immunotherapy work for everyone.

Subject of Research: Sex-biased immune aging and thymic function in anti-cancer T cell immunity

Article Title: Research Spotlight: New insights into how age and sex shape cancer immunity

Article References: Research Spotlight: New insights into how age and sex shape cancer immunity. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: cancer immunology, immune aging, thymus, T cells, lymph nodes, immunotherapy, immune checkpoint blockade, sex differences, CD8 T cells, melanoma, Nature Aging, tumor antigen recognition

The thymus is often dismissed as a vestigial organ, an immunological training camp that outlives its usefulness after childhood. Its involution, the gradual replacement of lymphoid tissue with fat, starts surprisingly early and proceeds throughout adult life. Yet the consequences of that decline have been hard to isolate. Recent work has sharpened the stakes considerably. A 2023 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that adults who had their thymus removed faced elevated mortality and increased cancer risk, suggesting the organ keeps doing meaningful work long after puberty. Two companion papers in Nature in 2026 went further, linking poor thymic health in adults to higher cancer risk and, crucially, showing that preserved thymic health correlates with better outcomes after cancer immunotherapy. The new Nature Aging research now supplies a mechanistic bridge between those clinical observations and the cellular machinery of antitumor immunity.

The research team, led by Menzel and colleagues, focused on middle age—a window when the immune system is neither young nor elderly but is already undergoing measurable erosion. Their central discovery concerns naive CD8+ T cells, the uncommitted killer lymphocytes that have never encountered their target antigen. These cells are the raw material of cancer immunity: when a tumor sheds antigens, it is naive CD8+ T cells circulating through lymph nodes that are most likely to carry receptors capable of recognizing them. Once activated, they proliferate and differentiate into the cytotoxic cells that attack tumors. But the reservoir of naive cells is finite, and it is replenished almost exclusively by fresh output from the thymus. As thymic function fades, the reservoir drains and cannot easily be refilled.

What makes the new study particularly consequential is the sex bias it uncovered. In male mice, the loss of naive CD8+ T cells during middle age was markedly accelerated compared with females, and this decline triggered a physical contraction of the lymph nodes themselves. Lymph nodes are not passive containers; they are finely structured organs whose architecture supports the chance encounters between antigen-presenting cells and the rare T cells bearing matching receptors. When the nodes contract, the naive T cell pool within them thins out, and the probability that any given tumor antigen will find its cellular match drops. The researchers demonstrated that this anatomical shrinkage directly limited cancer antigen recognition in middle-aged male mice, providing a concrete structural explanation for a functional deficit.

The importance of rare tumor-reactive T cells has been highlighted by parallel work in the field. A 2026 study in Cell argued that stochasticity in cancer immunotherapy outcomes stems from rare but functionally critical T cell clones—the authors called them Spark T cells—whose abundance can determine whether an antitumor response ignites at all. Related work in Nature showed that rare, high-avidity CD8+ T cell clones residing in lymph nodes are critical for effective antitumor immunity, and that the PD-1 axis helps maintain these stem-like cells. Taken together with the new findings, a coherent picture emerges: immunotherapy success depends on a lottery in which scarce tumor-reactive clones must exist, survive, and be found. A contracted lymph node with a depleted naive pool stacks the odds against winning that lottery.

The sex difference is the element most likely to reverberate through clinical practice. Sex-based disparities in immune responses are well documented—females generally mount stronger humoral and cellular responses to infections and vaccines, while males show higher rates of many cancers. The new study suggests one mechanistic root of such disparities: faster thymic decline in males depletes the naive T cell compartment earlier, compromising the antigen-recognition step that precedes everything else in antitumor immunity. If the same dynamics hold in humans, middle-aged men may enter immunotherapy with a systematically smaller repertoire of tumor-reactive precursors, helping to explain why checkpoint inhibitors show variable and sometimes sex-skewed efficacy across patient populations. The supporting human data in the study, together with the epidemiological links between thymic health and immunotherapy outcomes, make this hypothesis testable in the clinic.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the work is what happened when the researchers intervened. Restoring thymic output in middle-aged male mice replenished the naive CD8+ T cell pool, reversed the lymph node contraction, and improved responses to immunotherapy. This is a proof of principle that the age-related immune deficit is not irreversible. Thymus regeneration, whether through pharmacological stimulation, hormone modulation, or other means of boosting T cell production, could in principle re-prime the immune system before or alongside checkpoint blockade, restoring the raw material that these drugs need in order to work. The finding reframes immunotherapy not just as a battle at the tumor site but as a supply-chain problem: the drugs unleash T cells, but only if enough of the right T cells exist to be unleashed.

The implications extend beyond oncology. The naive T cell pool underwrites responses to new infections, vaccines, and emerging pathogens throughout life. A contracting lymphoid infrastructure in middle age could help explain why vaccine efficacy wanes unevenly across age and sex, and why some adults respond poorly to novel antigens they have never encountered. The thymus, long treated as dispensable in adult medicine, may deserve a status closer to that of other endocrine organs whose gradual failure shapes disease risk. Measuring thymic output—through markers such as T cell receptor excision circles or recent thymic emigrants—could become a routine part of immunological risk assessment, much as bone density scans inform fracture risk.

Significant questions remain. Mouse models of aging and thymic involution do not map perfectly onto human biology, and the magnitude of the sex bias in humans is not yet established with the precision achieved in the animal experiments. It is also unclear how late in life thymic restoration remains feasible, and whether pharmacological approaches can safely boost thymic output without triggering autoimmunity, since the thymus is also the site where self-reactive T cells are deleted. Clinical trials will be needed to determine whether thymus-supporting interventions can genuinely improve immunotherapy outcomes, and which patient subgroups—by age, sex, and baseline thymic function—stand to benefit most.

Even with those caveats, the study marks a conceptual shift. For two decades, cancer immunotherapy has focused on removing the brakes on T cells already present in tumors. This work points upstream, to the production and housing of the naive cells from which antitumor responses are built. The image that lingers is of the lymph node as a shrinking library, its catalog of tumor-recognizing volumes thinning year by year, faster in males than in females. Rebuilding the library—by reviving the thymus that writes its books—may prove to be one of the most promising strategies for extending the reach of cancer immunotherapy to the patients it currently fails, particularly middle-aged men whose immune reserves are quietly running low.

Subject of Research: Sex-biased age-related decline of naive CD8+ T cells and its impact on antitumor immunity and immunotherapy response

Article Title: Naive T cell decline limits cancer immunity in middle-aged male mice

Article References: Naive T cell decline limits cancer immunity in middle-aged male mice. (2026). Nature Aging. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-026-01239-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s43587-026-01239-3

Keywords: thymus, naive T cells, CD8+ T cells, lymph nodes, cancer immunotherapy, aging, immune senescence, thymic involution, antigen recognition, checkpoint inhibitors, sex differences, Nature Aging

Myasthenia gravis arises when the immune system produces antibodies that attack the neuromuscular junction, the microscopic relay where nerves hand signals to muscles. In many patients, the thymus, a gland tucked behind the breastbone that trains immune cells in early life, appears to drive this misguided attack. Surgical removal of the gland, known as thymectomy, has been practiced since the mid-twentieth century, but the evidence base was transformed in 2017 by the MGTX trial, a randomized study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. That trial showed convincingly that thymectomy improved outcomes and reduced the need for immunosuppressive drugs in patients aged fifty and under.

The catch was that MGTX included only seventeen patients aged fifty or older, far too few to say anything definitive about older adults. This matters because late-onset myasthenia gravis is increasingly common as populations age, and the biology of the disease appears to shift with time. In younger patients, the thymus is often enlarged and studded with ectopic germinal centers, structures where antibody-producing cells are actively generated. In older patients, the gland is typically atrophied and replaced by fat, raising the possibility that removing it accomplishes less. Several recent studies, including a 2021 meta-analysis and a 2026 multi-center longitudinal study, have produced conflicting results about whether older patients benefit.

To resolve the uncertainty, a team led by neurologist Morgan E. Heber and Yuebing Li combed the electronic medical records of their institution for patients who underwent thymectomy without thymoma, a tumor of the thymus, between 1999 and 2022. They divided the cohort into a young group of forty-five patients under fifty and an older group of thirty-four patients aged fifty or above. Because the study was retrospective, the researchers relied on data already collected during routine care, including the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America classification, the MG-Activities of Daily Living score, surgical approach, postoperative complications, and rates of medication reduction and disease flare.

The results were striking in their uniformity. When the two groups were compared after surgery, the researchers found no statistically significant difference in the proportion of patients whose MGFA classification improved, with a p-value of 0.48. Corticosteroid reduction, a key practical measure of whether patients can safely taper the drugs that carry long-term side effects, was likewise indistinguishable between groups, at p equal to 0.75. Postoperative complications, cancer diagnoses, and new autoimmune diagnoses showed no differences either, with p-values of 0.87, 0.57, and 0.13 respectively.

Functional outcomes told the same story. Rates of myasthenic exacerbation, the frightening episodes in which weakness escalates to threaten breathing, were similar across age groups at p equal to 0.22. The need for rescue therapy during follow-up, the MG-ADL score at final assessment, and the percentage of patients achieving minimal symptom expression, the closest thing the field has to a remission benchmark, were all statistically equivalent, with p-values of 0.29, 0.84, and 0.31. In plain terms, older patients who had their thymus removed fared about as well as younger ones, both in safety and in benefit.

The authors conclude that thymectomy in patients aged fifty or older with non-thymomatous myasthenia gravis appears comparable in safety and efficacy to the same operation in younger patients, providing support for its use in the management of older patients. For clinicians, this is a meaningful data point. Current international consensus guidance for myasthenia gravis, updated in 2020, has had to navigate thin evidence for late-onset disease, and the new findings add to a growing body of work suggesting that age-based exclusion from surgery is not justified by outcomes alone.

The biology behind these results remains an open question. If the atrophic thymus of an older patient is less immunologically active, why would removing it help as much? One possibility is that even involuted thymic tissue continues to harbor autoreactive cells or antibody-secreting populations; laboratory work has shown that cells from atrophic thymus can secrete acetylcholine receptor antibodies. Genetic studies have also linked late-onset disease to a CTLA4-low genotype and reduced output of naive T cells, hinting that the aging thymus is not merely dormant but subtly deranged in ways that surgery might still interrupt. Pathological studies showing that ectopic germinal centers predict better post-surgical prognosis add a further layer, suggesting that the relevant question may be what the thymus is doing, not simply how old the patient is.

There are also broader considerations that any patient weighing the operation should discuss with their doctors. A 2023 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that thymus removal in adults was associated with measurable long-term health consequences, including altered immune profiles, underscoring that the gland is not dispensable even in adulthood. The Cleveland Clinic study did not set out to measure those risks, and its retrospective design means that patients were not randomized to surgery, leaving open the possibility of selection effects. The cohort of seventy-nine patients, while respectable for a single institution, is modest, and the study spanned more than two decades, during which surgical techniques evolved from open transsternal approaches to video-assisted and robotic methods.

Even with those caveats, the study lands at a moment of genuine momentum in the field. Standardization efforts by a Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America task force are harmonizing how outcomes are measured in clinical practice, and new antibody-targeted therapies are reshaping the pharmacological landscape. Against that backdrop, the question is no longer whether thymectomy works, but for whom, and how best to combine it with modern immunotherapy. By showing that the calendar is a poor predictor of surgical benefit, the Cleveland Clinic team has widened the door for older patients who might otherwise have been told the operation was not for them. For a disease that so often strikes at the most visible moments of life, speaking, smiling, swallowing, that is news worth spreading.

Subject of Research: Outcomes of thymectomy in young versus older patients with non-thymomatous myasthenia gravis

Article Title: A comparison study of thymectomy outcomes in young and older patients with non-thymomatous myasthenia gravis

Article References: Heber, M. E., Li, Y., Raymond, D. P., & Li, Y. (2026). A comparison study of thymectomy outcomes in young and older patients with non-thymomatous myasthenia gravis. Journal of Neurology, 273(10), Article 566. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-026-14110-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00415-026-14110-7

Keywords: myasthenia gravis, thymectomy, non-thymomatous myasthenia gravis, late-onset myasthenia gravis, thymus, autoimmune disease, neuromuscular junction, MGTX trial, immunosuppression, Cleveland Clinic, Journal of Neurology, retrospective study

The infant’s story began deceptively. From the age of two months she had persistent tachypnea, an abnormally rapid breathing rate that in babies is most often attributed to minor respiratory infections. When a chest radiograph was obtained at four months, it showed widening of the mediastinum, the central compartment of the chest between the lungs. In infants this finding is frequently benign: the thymus, an organ of the immune system that sits just behind the breastbone, is naturally large in early life and gradually shrinks over the following years. The radiograph was therefore interpreted as a prominent but normal thymic shadow, and the child was followed without further intervention. Only in retrospect, the reporting team notes, did the contour and extent of the opacity on those early films appear atypical for simple thymic prominence.

By six months of age the picture had changed decisively. The baby’s respiratory distress worsened, prompting referral to a tertiary care center, where a repeat radiograph showed marked progression of the mediastinal widening along with mass effect and reduced aeration of the right lung. Chest computed tomography was ordered to characterize the lesion. The differential diagnosis at that point included thymic enlargement, lymphoma, and germ cell tumor, the broad categories that account for most masses in the anterior mediastinum of young children. The CT scan delivered a near-definitive answer: a large mass containing fat, cystic spaces, and calcifications, a combination of tissue densities highly characteristic of a mature teratoma. The scan also revealed the tumor’s dangerous anatomy. It was compressing the superior vena cava, the large vein returning blood from the head and arms to the heart, and pressing on the right heart itself. It had also collapsed the posterior segment of the right upper lobe by squeezing shut the segmental bronchus that ventilates it.

Teratomas are among the strangest tumors in medicine. They arise from germ cells, the primitive cells capable of forming an entire organism, and are composed of mature tissues derived from more than one embryonic layer. Most teratomas occur in the ovaries or testes, with other common sites including the sacrococcygeal region at the base of the spine and the retroperitoneum behind the abdominal organs. Within the chest, the anterior mediastinum is by far the most frequent location. Under the microscope, these tumors can contain an astonishing menagerie of structures: in this case, pathologists identified neuroglial tissue, adipose tissue, hyaline cartilage, skeletal muscle, respiratory-type epithelium, mucinous gastric-type glands, and even structures resembling ovarian follicles and kidney glomeruli, all coexisting within a single encapsulated mass. Focal nephrogenic rests, primitive kidney-forming tissue, were also present, and the tumor showed immunohistochemical positivity for the Wilms tumor 1 protein. Despite this bizarre composition, mature teratomas are histologically benign; their danger lies almost entirely in what they compress.

That danger announced itself dramatically. Several hours after the CT scan, the infant became irritable, her face puffed up, and she stopped breathing. The episode improved with repositioning and supplemental oxygen, a pattern that immediately raised concern for mediastinal mass syndrome. The syndrome arises because a large anterior mediastinal mass behaves like a plug in a hydraulic system. In an awake, spontaneously breathing child, respiratory muscle activity and airway tone help keep the compressed airway patent and assist venous return to the heart. When sedation or general anesthesia abolishes spontaneous respiration, when the child is placed supine, or when positive-pressure ventilation is applied, the already narrowed airway can collapse further and venous return can be critically impaired. The result can be abrupt, irreversible cardiorespiratory arrest, sometimes within minutes of induction. Anesthesiology literature has documented this phenomenon for decades, and it is the reason anterior mediastinal masses occupy a special place of caution in pediatric perioperative medicine.

The anesthetic plan crafted for this infant reflects nearly every principle that the specialty has developed for this scenario. Two units of cross-matched packed red blood cells were prepared before surgery. Standard monitoring was established, and anesthesia was then induced by inhalation with sevoflurane rather than by intravenous agents, allowing a gradual, controllable transition to unconsciousness while the child continued to breathe on her own. Once an adequate depth was achieved, the team placed a central venous line in the left femoral vein and an arterial line in the right femoral groin under ultrasound guidance, deliberately choosing femoral vessels because catheters inserted in the neck or arms might have passed through the compressed superior vena cava or failed to provide reliable access. Ketamine and atropine were administered intravenously to support hemodynamics and heart rate, and the trachea was intubated with an uncuffed 4.0-millimeter tube while spontaneous respiration was preserved. Crucially, muscle relaxants were withheld entirely at this stage, because paralyzing a child whose airway is held open only by her own respiratory effort can precipitate the very collapse the team feared.

With the airway secured and the child breathing spontaneously, sevoflurane was discontinued and maintenance anesthesia switched to isoflurane. The infant was turned into the left lateral decubitus position, lying on her left side, a posture that shifts the mediastinum and can partially relieve compression, and handed to the surgical team. Through a right thoracotomy, an incision between the ribs into the right chest, surgeons completely excised a well-encapsulated mass measuring approximately 20 by 5 centimeters in its longest dimensions; the gross specimen measured 10 by 7.5 by 6 centimeters and contained a cystic area of clear fluid. The operation lasted from 12:30 in the afternoon until 3:00 p.m., during which the infant received 100 milliliters of packed red blood cells and 400 milliliters of normal saline. Only after the tumor had been removed, and the compression eliminated, did the team administer a neuromuscular blocking agent and transition to controlled mechanical ventilation. A chest tube was placed and the right lung re-expanded satisfactorily.

The outcome underscores the value of this approach. The infant was successfully extubated on the first postoperative day, discharged in good condition on postoperative day five, and remained asymptomatic with normal respiratory status at three-month follow-up. Her case fits a recognizable pattern across the small published literature on infantile anterior mediastinal teratomas with airway or cardiovascular compromise. A five-month-old reported in 2018 was managed with a one-lung ventilation strategy to protect against compression at the carina and bronchi. A two-month-old reported in 2022, who presented with cough, noisy breathing, and cardiac displacement, underwent deliberate right-mainstem intubation without paralysis, with sternotomy and cannulation access prepared in advance, and was likewise extubated on day one and discharged on day five. A three-month-old reported in 2024 carried a congenital teratoma weighing twice her body weight and was managed with a staged approach of sedated imaging and percutaneous drainage before definitive thoracotomy. Across these independently reported cases, the recurring elements are nonspecific respiratory symptoms preceding diagnosis, spontaneous-ventilation induction with muscle relaxants withheld until the surgeon is ready, and generally favorable outcomes when those principles are followed.

The diagnostic lesson may be the most broadly applicable one. In infancy, the thymus is a large, soft organ that routinely produces impressive mediastinal shadows on plain radiographs, and distinguishing a pathological mass from normal thymic tissue on a single supine film is genuinely difficult. Features that should raise suspicion include atypical contours, interval growth between studies, mass effect on adjacent structures, and persistent unexplained tachypnea. Cross-sectional imaging with computed tomography, particularly the identification of fat, fluid, and calcification within a lesion, can settle the question, but only if the lesion is suspected in the first place. The authors of the report emphasize that heightened clinical vigilance in infants with persistent tachypnea and mediastinal widening, combined with early multidisciplinary planning among pediatric pulmonology, radiology, anesthesiology, and surgery, is essential to prevent the catastrophic anesthetic complications that anterior mediastinal masses can produce. For this one infant, that vigilance arrived just in time, and a tumor that had been silently growing since early infancy was removed before it could claim her airway for good.

Subject of Research: Anesthetic and surgical management of a giant anterior mediastinal mature teratoma causing mediastinal mass syndrome in an infant

Article Title: Anterior Mediastinal Mature Teratoma Presenting With Mediastinal Mass Syndrome in a Six‐Month‐Old Infant: Diagnostic Pitfalls and Anesthetic Challenges

Article References: Khanbabaee, G. T., Shafiee, A., Ghomi, Z., Mahdavi, N. S., Mohajerzadeh, L., Nilipour, Y., & Mahdavi, S. A. (2026). Anterior Mediastinal Mature Teratoma Presenting With Mediastinal Mass Syndrome in a Six‐Month‐Old Infant: Diagnostic Pitfalls and Anesthetic Challenges. Clinical Case Reports, 14(10), Article e73618. https://doi.org/10.1002/ccr3.73618

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/ccr3.73618

Keywords: mature teratoma, anterior mediastinal mass, mediastinal mass syndrome, infant, pediatric anesthesia, thymus, superior vena cava compression, spontaneous ventilation, thoracotomy, germ cell tumor, chest radiography, computed tomography