Between 1979 and 1991 thymectomy was performed on 31 patients with myasthenia gravis at the department of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, Keimyung University medical school. All patients were treated by transsternal thymectomy. During follow-up period that ranged from a month to 10.7 years[mean 2 years], the remission rate for the entire group was 16.1 percent and an additional 71.0 percent had improvement [87.1 percent benefited]. In those 8 patients with thymoma, the remission rate was 12.5 percent with 75.0 percent of the patients benefiting from operations The remainimg 23 patients fared better the operations: 17.4 percent had remission and a total of 91.4 percent benefited. There was no mortality, I concluded that most patients with myasthenia gravis will benefit from thymectomy, and that the improvement persists over an extended period of time in a high percentage of patients.