Germ cell tumors in Indian children

The present paper is a retrospective study of one hundred and thirty five germ cell tumors seen in children at the University Hospital, Varanasi during a period of 21 years. These tumors constituted 7.5% of all solid tumors in the pediatric age group. Histologically 89 tumors (65.9%) were benign and 46 (34.1%) were malignant. Eighty percent of ovarian and all the testicular germ cell tumors were malignant. Thirty per cent of the tumors were located in the sacrococcyx. The ovaries were the next common site. There were 80 girls, 53 boys, and 2 cases in which the sex was not recorded. The predominance amongst girls was mainly due to the more frequent involvement of ovaries as compared to the testes. Twenty nine of the children were in the first year of life. The factors probably responsible for the higher incidence of malignancy, the differences in anatomic location, and the sex distribution in comparison to other reports have been examined and discussed.