[Clinical study of testicular cancer]

Since April 1986, a prospective clinical trial for testicular cancer has been underway by our Nara Uro-Oncology Research Group. One hundred and forty-eight cases of germ cell tumor were entered into this study between April, 1986 and August, 1995. They included 99 cases (66.9%) of seminoma and 49 cases (33.1%) of non-seminomatous germ cell tumor (NSGCT). The mean age of seminoma cases (39.7 yrs) was higher than that (30.2 yrs) of NSGCT cases. One hundred and twenty-three cases were treated according to our protocol. In the treatment group, one patient with stage I seminoma died of other diseases and one patient each with stage II and stage III seminoma died of cancer. Three patients with stage III NSGCT died of cancer. The 5-year survival rate was 100% for stage I seminoma, and stage I and stage II NSGCT, 75.0% for stage II seminoma, 0% for stage III seminoma and 66.7% for stage III NSGCT. These findings suggest that new treatment modalities should be introduced into our protocol in the future.