[Ovarian growing teratoma syndrome clinical study of 22 cases]

To describe the essential points for the correct diagnosis and best treatment for ovarian growing teratoma syndrome (GTS) developed after surgery and chemotherapy for ovarian immature teratoma.

Retrospective review of the clinical characteristics and long term follow up results of 22 cases of ovarian GTS to illustrate the unique biological behavior of the tumor and good prognosis of the disease.

Pathological examination of the tumors revealed completely benign mature teratoma with G0 grading in 20 cases. The other 2 cases were found to be G0 mature teratoma with concurrent association of malignant somatic cell tumor: carcinoid and primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET) respectively. Among the 22 cases of ovarian GTS there are 6 cases with recurrent tumors developed repeatedly, so totally surgical treatments had been performed for 31 times. Time interval in between the development of the ovarian GTS and the initial surgery for their primary immature teratoma is equal to or exceeding one year in 94% (29/31) of the cases. Such a time factor is of high significance for the diagnosis of ovarian GTS. As the benign behavior of the ovarian GTS together with its poor response to chemotherapy have just been recognized in recent years, they were treated as malignant tumors as their original primary immature teratoma before the year of 1987. Postoperative chemotherapy of various kinds was applied. By the year of 1988 postoperative chemotherapy began to be abandoned and since then most of the patients (9/10) had not received postoperative chemotherapy. After long periods of follow up (3.6 -23.0 years) 20 of the 22 patients are found to be living and well. The rest 2 patients died of the concurrent association of malignant somatic cell tumors with carcinoid and PNET in 0.1 and 0.3 years respectively.

Ovarian GTS is a tumor developed after surgical and chemotherapeutic treatment of malignant ovarian immature teratoma. Pathologic grading of the tumors showed retroconversion of the malignancy of the tumor from G3, G2 or G1 to G0 with good prognosis. The tumor usually remained to be quiescent for long periods of time. But there are also some potential of progressive growth, the tumor may grow to huge size and the recurrent tumor may develop repeatedly for several times more than 10 or 20 years later. Surgical removal should be the main treatment either for the primary or the recurrent tumors. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are not effective and can do nothing but harm to patients. Only correct knowledge about the benign biological behavior of the ovarian GTS and reasonable therapeutic regimen can have the disease ends with good prognosis.