Surveillance is sufficient for most men with stage I seminoma after successful orchiectomy, according to the findings of the largest study ever performed to address the issue.
The 1,822 men followed only with surveillance in Denmark had an excellent disease-specific survival of 99.5%, Dr. Mette Saskø Mortensen said at a press briefing highlighting research to be presented at the upcoming American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting. Only 10 men died of testicular cancer or treatment-related causes during a median follow-up of 15.4 years.
Dr. Mette Mortensen
This finding means that for every 1,000 men followed by a surveillance program, only 4 will die within 10 years, said incoming ASCO president Dr. Clifford Hudis, chief of breast cancer medicine service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
He described the study as one of several recent reminders that sometimes "less is more" in patient care and noted that opting for surveillance spares patients from the harmful side effects of chemotherapy and radiation without diminishing their chances for long-term survival.
Seminoma is a relatively rare cancer, but it is the most common solid tumor among young men. Initial treatment is typically orchiectomy, but no standard postoperative management strategy has been established. The current results will likely accelerate the trend toward surveillance in the United States, where roughly 50% of men undergo either radiotherapy or chemotherapy with carboplatin after surgery.
Overall, 355 (19.5%) of the 1,822 men experienced a relapse during surveillance, said Dr. Mortensen, a PhD student in the oncology department at Copenhagen University Hospital.
The median time to relapse was 13.7 months, with the majority of patients (72.4%) relapsing within the first 2 years. Another 20.3% relapsed within years 2-5 and 7.3% after 5 years.
"With only 19.5% of the patients relapsing, the surveillance strategy spares the remaining 80% of patients from unnecessary treatment after orchiectomy," Dr. Mortensen said. "Surveillance is a safe strategy for stage I seminoma patients."
Surveillance has been the main follow-up strategy for stage I seminoma in Denmark since 1984, and consists of 5 years of scheduled clinical visits, computed tomography scans/chest x-rays, and blood measurements of tumor markers. Men in the analysis were diagnosed from 1984 to 2008, and their data were collected up to December 2012 from patient files and linked national registries.
As observed in other smaller studies, the risk for relapse was increased with elevated human chorionic gonadotropin levels of more than 200 IU/L, vascular invasion, and tumors larger than 4 cm, Dr. Mortensen said.
The study was supported in part by the Danish Cancer Society, Danish Research Foundation and the Preben and Anna Simonsen Foundation. Dr. Mortensen reported having no financial disclosures.