Acute Respiratory Distress due to Thymoma in a Patient Treated with TK Inhibitor: A Case Report and Review of the Current Treatment Options

Thymic malignancies are rare intrathoracic tumors that may be aggressive and difficult to treat in advanced stage. Surgery is the cornerstone of the management of thymomas: it is significant for the definite histopathological diagnosis and staging, and in most cases, it constitutes the first step of the treatment strategy. For patients with primary unresectable thymomas, the multimodal treatment schedule nowadays includes neoadjuvant chemotherapy, extensive surgery, adjuvant radiotherapy, and in some cases, adjuvant chemotherapy. A patient with a history of stage III COPD and an undiagnosed thoracic mass was admitted to the intensive care unit with acute respiratory distress. A radiologic evaluation by CT scan revealed a mass of 13 cm in diameter at the mediastinum. Fine needle aspiration was performed and revealed a thymoma. Due to poor performance status, the patient was not able to undergo surgery. He refused to be treated with neither chemotherapy nor radiotherapy, but due to EGFR overexpression, treatment with TK inhibitor was suggested. Fine needle aspiration biopsy is commonly used to identify metastasis to the mediastinum. However, it is less often employed as a primary diagnostic tool for tumors, particularly thymic neoplasms. The use of targeted therapies for the treatment of thymic malignancies has been described in the literature. Over the past years, significant efforts have been made to dissect the molecular pathways involved in the carcinogenesis of these tumors. Insights have been obtained following anecdotal clinical responses to targeted therapies, and large-scale genomic analyses have been conducted

Semileptonic decays of the standard Higgs boson

The Higgs boson decay into a pair of real or virtual W bosons, with one of them decaying leptonically, is predicted within the Standard Model to have the largest branching fraction of all Higgs decays that involve an isolated electron or muon, for M_h > 120 GeV. We compute analytically the fully-differential width for this h -> l \nu jj decay at tree level, and then explore some multi-dimensional cuts that preserve the region of large signal. Future searches for semileptonic decays at the Tevatron and LHC, employing fully-differential information as outlined here, may be essential for ruling out or in the Higgs boson and for characterizing a Higgs signal.Comment: 17 pages, 5 .eps figure

Searching for a heavy Higgs boson via the H --> l nu jj decay mode at the CERN LHC

The discovery of a heavy Higgs boson with mass up to m_H = 1 TeV at the CERN LHC is possible in the H--> W^+W^- --> l nu jj decay mode. The weak boson scattering signal and backgrounds from t\bar tjj and from W+jets production are analyzed with parton level Monte Carlo programs which are built on full tree level amplitudes for all subprocesses. The use of double jet tagging and the reconstruction of the W invariant mass reduce the combined backgrounds to the same level as the Higgs signal. A central mini-jet veto, which distinguishes the different gluon radiation patterns of the hard processes, further improves the signal to background ratio to about 2.5:1, with a signal cross section of 1 fb. The jet energy asymmetry of the W --> jj decay will give a clear signature of the longitudinal polarization of the W's in the final event sample.Comment: 23 pages (with 7 embedded figures), Revtex, uses epsf.sty. Z-compressed postscript version also available at http://phenom.physics.wisc.edu/pub/preprints/1997/madph-97-1017.ps.Z or at ftp://phenom.physics.wisc.edu/pub/preprints/1997/madph-97-1017.ps.

Searching for H --> tau tau in weak boson fusion at the LHC

Weak boson fusion is a copious source of intermediate mass Higgs bosons at the LHC. The additional very energetic forward jets in these events provide for powerful background suppression tools. We analyze the $H \to \tau\tau$ decay mode for the Standard Model Higgs boson. A parton level analysis of the dominant physics backgrounds (mainly $Z \to \tau\tau$ and Drell-Yan production of $\tau$'s) and of reducible backgrounds (from $W+$ jet and $b\bar{b}$ production in association with two jets and subsequent leptonic decays) demonstrates that this channel allows the observation of $H \to \tau\tau$ in a low background environment, yielding a significant Higgs signal with an integrated luminosity of about 30 fb$^{-1}$. The weak boson fusion process thus allows direct measurement of the $H\tau\tau$ coupling.Comment: 32 pages, Revtex, uses epsf.sty, 6 postscript figures. Opposite sign charge requirement for tau candidates added for reducible backgrounds; cuts for two figures explained more clearly in text; typos correcte

A method for identifying H -> tau tau -> e mu pTmiss at the CERN LHC

Weak boson fusion promises to be a copious source of intermediate mass Higgs bosons at the LHC. The additional very energetic forward jets in these events provide for powerful background suppression tools. We analyze the subsequent H -> tau tau -> e mu pTmiss decay for Higgs boson masses in the 100-150 GeV range. A parton level analysis of the dominant backgrounds demonstrates that this channel allows the observation of H -> tau tau in a low-background environment, yielding a significant Higgs boson signal with an integrated luminosity of order 60 fb^-1 or less, over most of the mass range. We also restate a No-Lose Theorem for observation of at least one of the CP-even neutral Higgs bosons in the MSSM, which requires an integrated luminosity of only 40 fb^-1.Comment: 21 pages, 10 embedded PS figs; additional comments on b-jet veto in tt~ backgrounds; to be published in Phys Rev