Treatment of primary intracranial germ cell tumors: Single center experience with 42 clinically diagnosed cases.
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Primary intracranial germ cell tumors (GCTs) are a class of heterogeneous tumors. Surgery can quickly relieve tumor compression and provide histological diagnosis. It is very difficult to treat some patients who are unable to be pathologically diagnosed. We aimed to analyze clinically diagnosed GCTs patients.


METHODS
Patients clinically diagnosed as primary intracranial GCTs were included in this study.


RESULTS
From 2002 to 2015, 42 patients clinically diagnosed with primary intracranial GCTs received chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. Patients were assigned to diagnostic chemotherapy group (25 cases), diagnostic radiotherapy group (5 cases) and gamma knife radiosurgery group (12 cases) based on their initial anti-tumor therapy. The 5-year survival rates were 85.8%, 75.0% and 63.6%, respectively. There were no statistically significant difference (p value = 0.44). Patients were assigned to the group (30 cases) with secretory tumors and the group (12 cases) with non-secretory tumors based on their levels of tumor makers. The 5- year survival rates were 80.7% and 68.6%, respectively. There were no statistically significant difference (p value = 0.49).The major adverse reactions were grade III - IV bone marrow suppression with an incidence of 35.2% and grade II- III nausea/vomiting with an incidence of 45.8%.


CONCLUSION
Surgical removal of tumor or biopsy is recognized as the most accurate method to determine the pathological property of tumor. But for some patients who can not be pathologically diagnosed, they can receive comprehensive treatments such as chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy, and some of them can still have good responses.
['Yang|Qun-Ying|QY|', 'Guo|Cheng-Cheng|CC|', 'Deng|Mei-Ling|ML|', 'Wang|Jian|J|', 'Wang|Jing|J|', 'Lin|Fu-Hua|FH|', 'Zhang|Ji|J|', 'Jiang|Xiao-Bing|XB|', 'Mou|Yong-Gao|YG|', 'Chen|Zhong-Ping|ZP|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D001855:Bone Marrow Diseases D001932:Brain Neoplasms D002648:Child D003131:Combined Modality Therapy D004358:Drug Therapy D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D014411:Neoplastic Stem Cells D009384:Paraneoplastic Endocrine Syndromes D020250:Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting D016634:Radiosurgery D011878:Radiotherapy D016019:Survival Analysis D055815:Young Adult D000509:alpha-Fetoproteins
primary intracranial germ cell tumor diagnostic chemotherapy diagnostic radiotherapy clinical diagnosis