Skip Navigation



Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology Advance Access published online on September 22, 2009
Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology, doi:10.1093/jjco/hyp121
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
40/1/73    most recent
hyp121v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Tanaka, T.
Right arrow Articles by Tsukamoto, T.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Tanaka, T.
Right arrow Articles by Tsukamoto, T.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved

Long-term Outcome of Chemotherapy for Advanced Testicular and Extragonadal Germ Cell Tumors: A Single-center 27-year Experience

Toshiaki Tanaka, Hiroshi Kitamura, Atsushi Takahashi, Naoya Masumori and Taiji Tsukamoto

Department of Urology, Sapporo Medical University, Hokkaido, Japan

For reprints and all correspondence: Toshiaki Tanaka, Department of Urology, Sapporo Medical University, S-1, W-16, Chuo-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8543, Japan. E-mail: zappa{at}pop12.odn.ne.jp

Received July 10, 2009; accepted August 19, 2009

Objective: We retrospectively assessed long-term outcomes of chemotherapy for advanced germ cell tumors (GCTs) at our institution.

Methods: Ninety-five consecutive males with advanced GCTs of the testis or extragonadal origin who received chemotherapy between 1980 and 2006 were enrolled. All patients underwent induction chemotherapy including cisplatin.

Results: The median follow-up period was 36.1 months (0 – 288.5) for all patients and 52.6 months (2.2 – 288.5) for the 73 current survivors. Totally, 75 patients (78.9%) achieved complete remission (CR). CR was achieved in 61.1%, 37.9% and 75.0% of the patients after induction therapy, second-line therapy and third-line or more, respectively. As salvage therapy, high-dose chemotherapy was performed in 11 patients (11.7%) and regimens with novel anticancer agents such as paclitaxel and irinotecan were employed for 8 patients (8.5%) from 2003 and later. The era of the treatment, extrapulmonary metastasis and serum {alpha}-fetoprotein were independent prognostic factors for patients. The 5-year overall survival of patients after 1992 was 83.0%, which was significantly higher than that of those before 1992 (56.3%). CR was never achieved in 20 patients and most of them met the criteria of the poor-prognosis group. Disease recurrence after CR was found in nine patients who were initially classified into the good- or intermediate-prognosis group.

Conclusions: Improvement of medical management during chemotherapy and the development of several regimens for salvage chemotherapy seemed to contribute to improving outcomes of patients with advanced testicular cancer. Newly established chemotherapy regimens are needed for improvement of survival of patients in the poor-prognosis group.

Key Words: antineoplastic agents • chemotherapy • germ cell tumor • metastasis • testicular neoplasm


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.