Table 5.

Pre-thymectomy TPE comparative efficacy data.

References	Nagayasu et al. (10)	Sarkar et al. (55)	Saeteng et al. (56)	d'Empaire et al. (57)	Jensen and Bril (58)	Alipour-Faz et al. (9)
Treatment Context	Pen-operative	Peri-operative	Peri-operative	Peri-operative	Peri-operative	Peri-operative
Comparison	TPE/No TPE	TPE/No TPE	TPE/No TPE	TPE/No TPE	TPE/IVIG	TPE/IVIG
Study Type	Retrospective	Retrospective	Retrospective	Retrospective	Retrospective	Prospective
Severity	Mild to moderate	Moderate to severe	Mild to moderate	Not specified	Mild to moderate	Not specified
Common serotype	AChR+ (75%)	AChR+ (100%)	Not specified	Not specified***	Not specified	AChR+ (100%)
# Patients	19/32	10/9	33/53	11/26	9/9	12/12
Response time point	5–7 yrs	1 yrs	-	-	1st post-op visit	-
Response rate	MGFA-PIS: 100/81.3% ∧	Osserman = 0: 80/44%	-	-	Δ Osserman −1 or better: 78/56%	-
		Δ Osserman:			Δ Osserman:
Response magnitude	-	−2.7 ± 0.5 /	-	-	−1.00 ± 0.71/	-
		−1.7 ± 0.7 ∧			−0.78 ± 0.83
Ventilation time (days unless stated otherwise)	-	1.3 ± 0.4/4.7 ± 3.2 ∧	Immediate extubation rate: 88/94%	1.02 ± 0.4/3.43 ± 0.6 ∧	-	0.54 (0.08–9)/0 (0.00*-0.92) ∧**
Hospitalization time		4.7 ± 1.2/	6.1 ± 4.2/		3.3 ± 1.2/	20.3 ± 8.4/
(days)		9.0 ± 3.9 ∧	5.2 ± 2.3		2.2 ± 1.9	21.1 ± 5.2
Crisis incidence timing	1 yr	1 yr	-	-	-	hosp.
Crisis incidence rate	5.3/28.1% ∧	0/33%	-	-	-	17/0%

Abbreviations: hosp., hospitalization.

No significant difference observed between treatments (p ≥ 0.05) unless noted.

^∧p < 0.05 as reported by original authors or calculated using Fisher exact test or student's t-test, if appropriate.

^*Lower value was updated from 0.08 (as reported in the paper) to 0.00 to include the reported median value (0) within the range.

^**median (range).

^***Data from abstract, full text was not available despite requests to corresponding author and publisher.