Current therapy for dysgerminoma of the ovary

It is important that therapy of ovarian dysgerminoma be optimized because of the young age of women affected and the threat that therapy may pose to fertility. Our understanding of dysgerminoma has improved, so that treatment schemes with better therapeutic ratio may now be used. Approximately 65% of patients present with stage IA disease. For those wishing to preserve fertility, conservative surgery with close clinical, radiologic, and serologic follow-up is the treatment of choice, with chemotherapy for relapse. Cure rates should approach 100%, and fertility is usually preserved. Intra-abdominal relapse in those not wishing to preserve fertility should be treated with modest-dose pelvic and abdominal irradiation. For those patients with disease presenting in stages IB, II, and III who wish to maintain fertility, unilateral oophorectomy followed by combination chemotherapy may be curative and spare ovarian function. Otherwise, complete surgery, followed by abdominopelvic radiation therapy, is recommended. This treatment produces less morbidity than chemotherapy and will cure approximately two-thirds of patients. Chemotherapy should be used for salvage of subsequent relapse. Both radiation and chemotherapy are highly effective treatment modalities for dysgerminoma. This information, coupled with better understanding of the patterns of disease spread and improved ability to identify nondysgerminomatous elements using serum tumor markers, means that a more conservative approach can be taken to management without compromising the chance of cure. Cure rates for dysgerminoma should now approach the role of 97% achieved in the comparable tumor, testicular seminoma.