Patients with stage I testicular germ cell tumors have a long life expectancy, but the tumors have a potential to relapse after treatment. Although relapse is observed within a few years in most cases, late relapse over 10 years after initial treatment has also been reported in patients with stage I testicular germ cell tumors. We encountered a case of testicular seminoma that developed mediastinal lymph node metastasis 13 years after radical surgery for the primary tumor. The relapsed disease progressed rapidly and the patient died within 1 month due to respiratory failure without any chance for therapy. On postmortem examination, the thoracic lesions were pathologically confirmed to be metastases from the testicular seminoma with yolk sac tumor. Here, we report the clinical course and a review of the relevant literature. Based on our experience, we emphasize long-term follow-up and/or careful examination in patients with stage I testicular germ cell tumors.
Case reports in oncology. 2019 Jun 26*** epublish ***
Toshirou Fukushima, Takuro Noguchi, Takashi Kobayashi, Nodoka Sekiguchi, Takesumi Ozawa, Tomonobu Koizumi, Hisashi Tamada
Department of Comprehensive Cancer Therapy, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan., Department of Central Laboratory, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan.