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World J Clin Pediatr. Feb 8, 2017; 6(1): 10-23
Published online Feb 8, 2017. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v6.i1.10
Imaging of the pediatric thymus: Clinicoradiologic approach
Smita Manchanda, Ashu S Bhalla, Manisha Jana, Arun K Gupta
Smita Manchanda, Ashu S Bhalla, Manisha Jana, Arun K Gupta, Department of Radiodiagnosis, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110088, India
Author contributions: Manchanda S and Bhalla AS contributed equally to this work; Manchanda S contributed to literature search, manuscript preparation and editing; Bhalla AS contributed to literature review, manuscript editing and figure preparation; Jana M and Gupta AK contributed to manuscript editing and figure preparation.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict of interest associated with any of the senior author or other coauthors contributing their efforts in this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Correspondence to: Ashu S Bhalla, MD, MAMS, FICR, Professor, Department of Radiodiagnosis, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi 110088, India. ashubhalla1@yahoo.com
Telephone: +91-011-26594925 Fax: +91-011-26584366
Received: May 8, 2016
Peer-review started: May 10, 2016
First decision: July 25, 2016
Revised: September 29, 2016
Accepted: November 21, 2016
Article in press: November 22, 2016
Published online: February 8, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: It is important for clinicians to be able to identify normal variations in thymic appearance and avoid over-investigation. However, it is equally important to have a high index of suspicion for abnormal thymus especially in multisystem disorders. We discuss normal variants, hyperplasia and focal masses; and propose an algorithmic approach to the evaluation of a suspected thymic mass based on imaging morphology.