Combination chemotherapy with CDDP, vinblastine and bleomycin (PVB) has improved the prognosis of patietns with advanced testicular cancer. Recent efforts have been focused on the treatment for the patients with refractory testicular cancer who fail to achieve complete response (CR) or for those patients who have once achieved CR but subsequently have a recurrence of disease.
In this study, we presented our clinical results of the induction PVB therapy in 22 patients with advanced testicular cancer and of the surgical treatment for the residual metastasis following chemotherapy in 16, who failed to achieve CR, of the 22 patients.
With induction chemotherapy, 4 (18.2%) and 11 patients (50.0%) achieved CR and PR, respectively, resulting in a 68.2% response rate. The low CR rate may contribute, in part, to several “poor prognostic features”, such as the bulky metastasis, found in most of these patients.
The surgical treatment for 16 patients consisted of retroperitoneal lymph node dissection in 12 patients, partial resectin of the lung in 5, supraclavicular lymph node dissection in 1 and resection of a brain lesion in 1.
The histopathological study revealed that 3 patients (18.8%) had granulation or fibrosis, 3 (18.8%) mature teratoma and 10 (62.4%) cancer cells in the surgically removed residual metastasis following chemotherapy. In all of the patients without cancer cells in the residual metastasis, AFP and hCG-β had normalizd at the time of surgery by the induction PVB chemotherapy. However, in the patients with cancer cells found in the residual metastsis, most had shown either one or two persistently elevated markers.
With surgical treatment, 6 (37.5%) out of 16 patients with residual metastasis following chemotherapy have been free of disease for more than 36 months.
The post surgical course was influenced by the status of AFP and hCG-β prior to surgery following chemotherapy, since the patients having a normalized status of these markers experienced a good clinical course, while those with the persistently elevated status died of cancer, postoperatively, within 12 months. This result has indicated that surgical treatment for residual metastasis following chemotherapy should be determined by the status of the tumor markers.
The histological features of residual metastasis following chemotherapy were also reflected in the post surgical course. All long term survivors had granulation or fibrosis, or mature teratoma in the histology of their residual metastasis. In contrast, the patients who died of cancer revealed to have cancer cells in the histology of metastasis.
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