Malignant ovarian germ cell tumours in the post-menopausal population

Malignant ovarian germ cell tumours (MOGCT) are uncommon in the general population and very rare in post-menopausal women.

To evaluate the demographics, treatment and survival of post-menopausal women with MOGCT treated at the Queensland Centre for Gynaecological Cancer (QCGC) and compare these with pre-menopausal women.

Retrospective analysis was performed of the QCGC database from January 1981 to February 2017. The disease course of post-menopausal women was compared with pre-menopausal women affected by MOGCT over the same period and compared with the world literature.

There were six post-menopausal women with MOGCT treated at the QCGC compared with 166 pre-menopausal women. In the post-menopausal group of women, there was no mortality directly attributed to germ cell ovarian disease compared with 10 (6.0%) women in the pre-menopausal group.

Malignant ovarian germ cell tumours are a very rare condition in post-menopausal women. Despite some suggestion in the world literature that survival outcomes are worse in this population, this was not found in our study.