Progression-free and overall survival rates for patients with metastatic testicular cancer have significantly grown since 1990, researchers reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The researchers compared data on 2,451 patients with metastatic seminoma who received cisplatin- and etoposide-based first-line chemotherapy from 1990–2013. During that timeframe, five-year progression-free survival rates improved from 82% to 89% and five-year overall survival rates grew from 86% to 95% in patients with a good prognosis and from 67%–79% to 72%–88% in those with an intermediate prognosis.
The researchers also used the study to identify a new adverse prognostic factor: lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). They found that both progression-free and overall survival in patients with good prognosis who had an LDH higher than 2.5 x upper limit of normal were similar to patients with an intermediate prognosis. They proposed adding LDH as an adverse prognostic factor to the International Germ-Cell Cancer Collaborative Group classification for patients with an otherwise good prognosis.
“Given five-year progression-free and overall survival probabilities of 88% and 95%, respectively, across all prognostic groups, metastatic seminoma represents the most curable metastatic cancer in assigned males,” the researchers said.
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