Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Sep 6, 2024; 12(25): 5646-5652
Published online Sep 6, 2024. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v12.i25.5646
Enigmatic thymus: Variations in anatomical localisation of thymic tissue as an easily misdiagnosed congenital anomaly in surgical practice
Alexander Mayer, Jaroslav Voller, Ivan Varga
Alexander Mayer, Fourth Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University and University Hospital Bratislava, Bratislava 81372, Slovakia
Jaroslav Voller, Faculty of Health Care Studies, University of Western Bohemia, Pilsen 30100, Czech Republic
Ivan Varga, Institute of Histology and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava 81372, Slovakia
Author contributions: Varga I conceived the idea; Mayer A and Voller J conducted a literature search; Mayer A wrote the preliminary draft; Varga I and Voller J critically reviewed as well as improved the manuscript; all authors contributed equally to preparing this manuscript;
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ivan Varga, PhD, Professor, Institute of Histology and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava, Spitalska Street 24, Bratislava 81372, Slovakia. ivan.varga@fmed.uniba.sk
Received: March 11, 2024
Revised: April 24, 2024
Accepted: May 27, 2024
Published online: September 6, 2024
Processing time: 127 Days and 7.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: In this editorial, we comment on a case report by Sun et al, entitled: Multilocular thymic cysts can be easily misdiagnosed as malignant tumor on computer tomography. We focus specifically on the pertinence of establishing a diagnosis in clinical practice of the ectopically localised tissue of thymus, especially in the case of cystic variation of this thymic tissue. We also summarise lesser-known facts about the anatomy, histopathology and developmental biology of the human thymus as one of the most enigmatic organs in the human body.