Testicular Cancer Treatment and Survival Rates Are Improving

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 (https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.20.03292).

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