Residual Masses After Chemotherapy in Men With Nonseminomas

Residual masses following chemotherapy in men with nonseminomatous germ cell tumors often contain viable cancer or teratoma, and the standard of care is to resect all such masses when possible. However, there are no randomized controlled trials evaluating this issue. Instead, the practice is based on the fact that viable neoplasm is often found at surgery in these patients, and the presumption is that such tumors would progress if not resected. If serum tumor markers are rising, salvage chemotherapy is usually given, but stable or slowly declining tumor markers are not a contraindication to resection of residual masses.

Case series of men undergoing postchemotherapy resections have reported that roughly 10% will have viable germ cell cancer, 45% will have teratomas, and 45% will have no viable tumors.[30] Numerous attempts have been made to identify the patients who need surgery and the patients who can be safely observed. Variables predictive of finding only necrosis or fibrosis at surgery include the following:[31]

However, only a small proportion of men have favorable enough features to have less than a 10% chance of having viable neoplasm in their residual masses, and thus the utility of current models has been questioned.[24,32]

When multiple sites of residual disease are present, all residual masses are generally resected. If it is not surgically feasible, resection is generally not performed. Some patients may have discordant pathological findings (e.g., fibrosis/necrosis, teratoma, or carcinoma) in residual masses in the abdomen versus the chest. Some medical centers perform simultaneous retroperitoneal and thoracic operations to remove residual masses,[28,33] but most do not. Although the agreement among the histologies of residual masses found after chemotherapy above the diaphragm versus those found below the diaphragm is only moderate (kappa statistic, 0.42), some evidence exists that if retroperitoneal resection is performed first, results can be used to guide decisions about whether to perform a thoracotomy.[34]

In a multi-institutional case series of surgery to remove postchemotherapy residual masses in 159 patients, necrosis only was found at thoracotomy in about 90% of patients who had necrosis only in their retroperitoneal masses. The figure was about 95% if the original testicular primary tumor had contained no teratomatous elements. Conversely, the histology of residual masses at thoracotomy did not predict nearly as well the histology of retroperitoneal masses.[34] Nonetheless, some centers continue to support resection of all residual masses, even if necrosis is found in the retroperitoneum.[35]

The presence of persistent malignant elements in the resected specimen is considered by some clinicians to be an indication for additional chemotherapy.[36] However, there are no prospective trials investigating the benefit of such treatment. In some cases, chemotherapy is initiated before the orchiectomy because of life-threatening metastatic disease. When this is done, orchiectomy after initiation or completion of chemotherapy is advisable to remove the primary tumor. A physiological blood-testis barrier seems to appear, and there is a higher incidence (approximately 50%) of residual cancer in the testicle than in remaining radiographically detectable retroperitoneal masses after platinum-based chemotherapy.[16] Some investigators have suggested that in children, 90% of whom have yolk sac tumors, radiation therapy should be given to residual masses after chemotherapy rather than surgery.[37]

Treatment options for initial treatment for nonseminoma patients with good-risk disease:

Treatment options for initial treatment for nonseminoma patients with intermediate- and poor-risk disease:

Management of residual masses following chemotherapy for patients with seminoma

Management of residual masses following chemotherapy for patients with nonseminoma