Testicular germ cell tumours (TGCTs) are the most common cause of cancer in men between the ages of 15 and 40 years, and, overall, the majority of patients should expect to be cured. The European Germ Cell Cancer Consensus Group has provided clear guidelines for the primary treatment of both seminoma and nonseminomatous germ cell tumours. There is, however, no international consensus on how best to follow patients after their initial management. This must promptly and reliably identify relapses without causing further harm. The standardising of follow-up would result in optimising risk-benefit ratios for individual patients, while ensuring economic use of resources. We have identified the seven common scenarios in managing seminomas and nonseminomas of the various stages and discuss the pertinent issues around relapse and follow-up. We review the available literature and present our comprehensive TGCT follow-up guidelines. Our protocols provide a pragmatic, easily accessible user-friendly basis for other centres to use or to adapt to suit their needs. Furthermore, this should enable future trials to address specific issues around follow-up giving meaningful and useful results.
BackgroundTesticular germ cell tumours (TGCTs) are uncommon malignancies but the most common cause of cancer in men between the ages of 15 and 40 years. The peak incidence for nonseminomatous germ cell tumour (NSGCT) is between 20 and 30 years of age, and for seminoma between 30 and 40 years. In the United Kingdom, the incidence rate is only 1 : 100 000 men per year with a lifetime risk of developing a TGCT of 1 in 400 and 1900 new cases per year (Horwich, 2002). There has, however, been a steady increase in the incidence of TGCTs in European countries in the last two decades (Bergstrom et al, 1996). The reasons for this increasing incidence and the aetiology of TGCTs remain unknown. The European Germ Cell Cancer Consensus Group has provided clear guidelines for the primary treatment of both seminoma tumour and NSGCT (Schmoll et al, 2004). There is, however, a lack of clear consensus on how to follow patients after primary treatment, and a number of issues dictate that follow-up should be carefully thought out and rigorously adhered to. Here, we discuss these factors as they pertain to male germ cell tumour (GCT) practice and describe our recently developed protocols.
Rational for follow-upDetecting relapse In general, detecting relapse is the major reason for maintaining follow-up and is the main focus of this review. The management of testicular cancer has been a major oncological success story, and provides a model for the management of curative solid tumours (Horwich et al, 2006). The use of platinumbased chemotherapy schedules has resulted in high cure rates for all stages of the disease (International Germ Cell Cancer Collaborative Group, 1997). The fact that the majority of young men treated for testicular cancer have a durable response to primary treatment has resulted in the accumulation of significant data on both the patterns ...