Functional Outcomes of Germ Cell Tumors

Abstract

  Intracranial germ cell tumors are common in adolescents and young adults. Treatment is intended to achieve both tumor control and long-term functional preservation. This review describes the functional outcomes achieved by various treatment strategies for germinoma. Radiation therapy provides high tumor control rates but late complications such as poor performance status, declined intelligence, endocrine disorders, and reduced quality of life may occur. Chemotherapy and reduced dose radiation therapy to the whole ventricle were introduced to avoid these problems without compromising tumor control. Current treatments are reported to preserve intelligence, memory, executive function, and behavior compared to healthy individuals. However, this treatment strategy still has many unsolved problems with longitudinal changes in neurocognitive function and differences in functional outcomes according to the tumor site, age of onset, and other related factors.

  Systematic and comprehensive accumulation of information on functional outcomes and construction of an evaluation system based on multi-disciplinary approaches will be necessary to accurately evaluate functional preservation achieved by future therapies.