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Metastatic Seminoma: Should Treatment Be Different from Non-seminoma?

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Germ Cell Tumours V

Abstract

It is now more than 50 years since Friedman [1] first demonstrated that seminoma was more sensitive to radiation than non-seminoma and it has since been standard to give a different radiation dosage. In contrast, although our group first demonstrated 18 years ago that the chemosensitivity of metastatic seminoma to single agent cisplatin was so different to that of non-seminoma, that it might be safe to treat all metastatic seminoma with single agent and only use combination to salvage the minority who fail it [2, 3], BEP combination chemotherapy remains the standard of care. With new evidence from multivariate analysis demonstrating that pure seminoma histology predicts for a better relapse free survival after cisplatin based combination therapy than non-seminoma [4] and given the increased anxiety about late second malignant events after etoposide treatment [5], renewed interest in this issue is emerging. This paper updates the results from our studies and attempts to define a subgroup of seminoma patients in whom it may be safe to use single agent platinum therapy.

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Ong, J. et al. (2002). Metastatic Seminoma: Should Treatment Be Different from Non-seminoma?. In: Harnden, P., Joffe, J.K., Jones, W.G. (eds) Germ Cell Tumours V. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3281-3_54

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3281-3_54

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-3283-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-3281-3

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