Archive for the Testicular Cancer category.
Two studies looking at carboplatin. One done at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Higher failure rate with carboplatin although no difference in overall survival as a result of salvage. A European study, 598 men. Good risk. Difference in complete response was seen and there is ultimately differences in treatment failure and in survival, although this was not statistically significant. Carboplatin is considered an inferior drug to platinum in the context of testicular cancer. So this is the standard. It’s BEP, platinum 20 mg per meter squared given for five successive days, VP-16 100 mg per meter squared given for five successive days, bleomycin 30 units given weekly, three cycles on time, no dose reductions and no dose delays.
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For poor risk patients there have been attempts at improving the cure rates. As I mentioned before, the cure rate for these patients is about 50%. However, there has been no improvement over the past 10 or 15 years of research. The standard remains four cycles of BEP. Randomized study comparing BEP to double dose cisplatin BP, no better, greater toxicity with double dose cisplatin. There have been attempts at using high dose chemotherapy here but that remains unproven. Two recently published randomized studies looking at the substitution of ifosfamide for bleomycin, VIP versus BEP. Both of which showed equivalents of VIP to BEP with a higher hematologic toxicity associated with VIP. So for the majority of patients with poor risk germ cell tumors off of a clinical trial the standard remains four cycles of platinum, VP-16 and bleomycin.
Now here is a patient, a fairly typical patient, who has multiple pulmonary metastases and high tumor markers, treated with chemotherapy. Tumor markers normalize. The masses clear up completely. Complete response, no further therapy is necessary, the patient is observed. Female viagra enhances libido in women with lack of desire. This is a patient who received chemotherapy, markers normalized and was left with this large, irregular retroperitoneal mass. This started out as a non-seminoma in the testes. So the standard of care in the United States for residual masses, after tumor marker normalization, is resection of the residual mass. In 2006 what one finds in these residual masses 10% of the time is residual cancer. If residual cancer is seen, further chemotherapy is necessary. The standard has been two further cycles of the same chemotherapy, although salvage chemotherapy is appropriate here as well. Forty-five percent of the time one sees scar tissue. If scar tissue is seen, the patient obviously has a great prognosis. So further therapy is necessary. Forty-five percent of the time a mature teratoma will be seen. If it is seen, no further chemotherapy is necessary but there needs to be close surveillance in these patients for the possibility of other teratomas arising in other locations. For patients who were treated with primary chemotherapy and ultimately relapse with marker elevation and/or progression of tumor masses, some of those patients can still be cured with subsequent chemotherapy. For a patient who has received standard chemotherapy, about 20% of patients will be cured with a substitution of ifosfamide and Velban, plus platinum; so-called VEIP. So 20% of these patients will be cured with substitute standard chemotherapy and when high dose chemotherapy is used in combination with this, in non-randomized studies, about 50% of patients will be cured. These are obviously more selected patients, responding patients, so whether or not high dose chemotherapy as first salvage is better than chemotherapy alone, remains to be determined. For patients who failed primary chemotherapy and salvage chemotherapy, one can still cure some of these patients with high dose chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant. About 25% of patients in these studies that have been published will be cured.
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Finally, last but not least, there are some patients who become chemotherapy-resistant who ultimately can be cured with third line surgery. These are chemotherapy refractory patients who generally have resectable disease, hopefully single site disease, generally late relapsers. There tends to be teratoma in the original pathology and there tends to be alpha-fetoprotein marker elevation only. Patients with HCG elevations, very poor. I’ll stop here.
One of the issues that comes up in the treatment of seminomas with chemotherapy is the presence of a residual mass after treatment. In distinction to non-seminomas where teratoma is an issue, teratoma is not an issue with seminoma, and the issue here is whether there is residual seminoma or carcinoma in the residual mass or is it all just fibrosis. The vast majority of the time the mass is residual fibrosis. There have been strategies in the United States, and Europe as well, of resecting the residual mass or giving radiation for the residual mass, but I think that in 2006 the standard of care in general is observation. This is a non-randomized study from England that looked at the utility of giving radiation to these masses after chemotherapy. This is a study of 302 consecutive men with metastatic seminoma, treated with chemotherapy. Over 50% of the patients had residual masses, so this is a common scenario in seminoma. Half the patients received radiation, half the patients were observed. There were no differences in the subgroups of patients who received radiation or did not, although this was not randomized. The only difference was which hospital was doing the treating, since there were some hospitals in this study where the standard of care was no radiation. Others where it was radiation. Overall the cure rate was very high and there was no difference in relapse rates or overall survival, whether or not radiation was given. So once again, the standard for post chemotherapy masses after seminoma treatment is observation.
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Now shifting over to non-seminomas; the sub-grouping is a little more complex. This is now the consensus, the world consensus, in terms of stratification. These are good risk non-seminomas. These patients have to have testicular primaries or retroperitoneal primaries, no non- pulmonary visceral metastases and low markers. These patients are cured over 90% of the time. Intermediate risk patients; no non-pulmonary visceral metastases, retroperitoneal or testicular primaries, intermediate levels of markers. These patients are cured 80% of the time. Finally, poor prognosis patients; these are patients with mediastinal primaries or non-pulmonary visceral metastases, or high markers. Fifty percent of these patients are cured with chemotherapy. Now the standard of care in the United States for many years for advanced disease had been treatment with the so-called Einhorn regimen, three drugs; platinum, Velban and bleomycin until this study was done about 15 years ago, when it was recognized that VP-16 was an effective salvage treatment. It was incorporated into the front line therapy in a regimen called BEP and compared to PVB. The results of BEP were superior to that of PVB as shown in this particular Kaplan-Meyer curve, and also the morbidity associated with BEP was less than PVB. So four cycles of BEP became the standard of care in the United States for all risk groups with testicular cancer.
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The past 10-15 years have been a series of randomized studies, attempting to minimize therapy for good risk patients. I just want to briefly go through these studies but ultimately get back to the main point, which is; in the United States, at the present time, the standard of care for patients with good risk or intermediate risk non-seminomas or seminomas is three cycles of platinum, VP-16 and bleomycin. Memorial Sloan-Kettering still adheres to the standard of treatment being four cycles of platinum, VP-16 and I’ll address that in a second. The first randomized study was done at Memorial for good risk patients comparing a complex five-drug regiment called BAB-6, to four cycles of platinum and VP-16. In good risk patients these appeared to be equivalent. So this regimen has been a standard of care at Memorial since that time. There was a study, an Intergroup study, that compared four cycles of BEP to three cycles of BEP and these two proved to be equivalent for good risk patients. Since that time there have been a number of other studies which have failed to demonstrate any ability to decrease the amount of cycles or to eliminate bleomycin from the regimen, or to substitute carboplatin for platinum. Here’s one study that compared three cycles of BEP, now the standard, to three cycles of EP. There were 23% failures with EP versus 14% with BEP. A statistically significant difference in survival with inferiority in three cycles of EP. So three cycles of EP should certainly not be given. How about four cycles of EP versus BEP? There is going to be a caveat for these two particular European studies because in Europe the dose of VP-16 is lower than the VP-16 dose that’s given in the United States. With that caveat in mind, in this European study 419 men were randomized to either four cycles of BEP or four cycles of EP. There was a difference in complete response rates, statistically significant, but with salvage therapy, no ultimate difference in survival. Another smaller study comparing four cycles of EP to three cycles of BEP, 58 men randomized. There was a difference in relapse free survival, no difference in survival, with median follow-up of three years. So there appeared to be superiority of BEP over EP but once again, the caveat here is that of the lower VP-16 doses in these European regimens.
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So what’s a rational approach for patients with stage I non-seminoma? For the low risk patient, surveillance if done well is appropriate, if the patient is compliant, if the physician is willing to do it. If there is a physician who is capable and experienced in performing a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, that’s a reasonable alternative for these patients. For high risk patients, it is generally preferable to do something rather than watch the patient, although surveillance is an alternative for these patients. Either retroperitoneal lymph node dissection or chemotherapy with two cycles of BEP is an appropriate strategy for such patients.
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Now if a patient who undergoes a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection is found to have disease in the lymph nodes, there are two approaches for these patients. One is observation, and as you can imagine, about 50% of these patients will relapse, or alternatively adjuvant chemotherapy is appropriate. Two cycles of BEP chemotherapy here will cure the vast majority of patients. These alternatives were based on a randomized study published over 10 years ago in the New England Journal, in which patients were randomized to either observation after finding pathological stage II disease, or adjuvant chemotherapy. The death rate comparable from testicular cancer, no statistical difference between these two subgroups.
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Now for patients with advanced cancer, advanced testicular cancer, chemotherapy is the standard of care. This just happens to be our series of 150 patients who were treated with chemotherapy. This slide is important to illustrate what one sees with chemotherapy, that is, about an 80% cure rate overall, across risk groups and that the majority of patients who fail will do so within the first couple of years. Although about 10-20% of patients who fail will do so beyond two years.
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There is now a consensus with regard to risk stratification of patients with advanced disease for seminomas and non-seminomas. This is in the hand-out, but let me just go through this briefly in the slides. For seminomas, patients are considered to have good prognosis if they have pure seminoma, no elevation of alpha-fetoprotein and the seminoma is arising from any site, either testicular or extra-gonadal, and there is no evidence of non-pulmonary visceral metastases. These patients will be cured almost 90% of the time with chemotherapy. Poor prognosis seminomas are those with non-pulmonary visceral metastases. These patients will be cured about 70% of the time.
Now an alternative approach to patients with stage I non-seminoma is surveillance. This is a look at multiple studies in which patients with non-seminomas were observed, subsequently may have relapsed, and ultimately treated with chemotherapy. In this conglomerate of studies, as one would anticipate, about 28% of patients relapsed and ultimately with chemotherapy the majority of those patients are cured. Overall the results of surveillance, if done well, are very similar to a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Viagra super active works faster and lasts longer than you’ve ever known. Typically if one watches a patient with stage I seminoma and they relapse, they will do so very quickly; 50% by five months, 80% by two years. You rarely see a relapse beyond two years, although it has been reported. Typically if they are watched closely, as they should be, they will relapse in a good-risk fashion and are highly likely to be cured. In general, they will relapse in the retroperitoneum more frequently than the chest and more frequently in both places. About 20% of patients will relapse with markers only and if they do, it’s appropriate to treat them with chemotherapy at that point.
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Now on the basis of the surveillance studies and the retroperitoneal lymph node dissection studies that have been published over the last 20 years, one can stratify patients into two basic subgroups; good risk patients and poor risk patients. Good risk patients are those patients that in their orchiectomy specimen have no lymphatic or venous invasion and have a relatively low proportion of embryonal carcinoma. Poorest patients are those with lymphatic invasion or a venous invasion and/or a high proportion of embryonal carcinoma. These patients will relapse with surveillance about 60% of the time. Patients without lymphatic or venous invasion and lower proportions of embryonal carcinoma will relapse about 20% of the time on surveillance.
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An alternative therapy for patients with stage I seminoma, which might be appropriate for patients who are in the high risk group is adjuvant chemotherapy. That is, chemotherapy when the markers are normal after orchiectomy. Now for high risk features, if patients have high risk features and a greater than 50% relapse, this is an appropriate alternative therapy. This has been proven now in three studies, one of which is shown here. This is a study from Great Britain in which 123 patients who had high risk features were treated with two cycles of platinum, VP-16 and bleomycin – which we will talk about – and ultimately 98% of the patients were cured in this particular study. Similar results were seen in the other two studies.
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The story is a lot more complicated for stage I non-seminomas where there are several choices involved in the treatment of these patients. And I just want to go through these briefly in some amount of detail. Surveillance, retroperitoneal lymph node dissection and chemotherapy are the three alternatives. The standard in the United States for many years, particularly before effective chemotherapy was developed for non-seminomas, was a so-called on-block peritoneal lymph node dissection. You can see the borders of this particular surgery, which involved a dissection of lymph nodes from above the renal hila to below the aortic bifurcation bilaterally. This was effective at staging patients and was also effective, in some cases, in actually curing patients. But it left all patients with retrograde ejaculation and infertility. So procedures were developed over the last 20 years to modify the procedures, to allow the contralateral nerve supply involved in ejaculation to be maintained. Ether a template procedure like this or a nerve identification procedure such that one can spare the nerves. With those procedures about 90% of patients with stage I testicular cancer will maintain antegrade ejaculation.
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Now how effective is the retroperitoneal lymph node dissection in curing patients with stage I testicular cancer? The largest study ever conducted was a multi-institution study called the Testicular Cancer Intergroup Study, conducted between 1979 and 1984 in which over 500 patients from multiple institutions underwent a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. In that study 284 patients were found to have pathological stage I disease. That is, they were found to have no involvement of the lymph nodes. In those patients, about 10% of the patients ultimately recurred, generally with supradiaphragmatic recurrences, pulmonary metastases and most of those patients were ultimately cured with chemotherapy. For stage I pathological testicular cancer, the mortality rate is 2%. Similar results are seen for patients who undergo a lymph node dissection, who are found to have involved lymph nodes. Pathological stage II disease. These patients subsequently may need chemotherapy and the cure rates in these patients is similarly 98%. So the results of retroperitoneal lymph node dissection are outstanding, 98% of patients with stage I disease will be cured.
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But if we look at how effective retroperitoneal lymph node dissection is at actually curing disease, one has to look at the studies in a little more detail. Look at the studies in which a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection was performed, disease was found in the lymph nodes, and no subsequent therapy was undertaken. What was the cure rate in those patients? Overall, the retroperitoneal lymph node dissection with no subsequent chemotherapy is curative about 50-60% of the time. The remainder of the time the patients will require chemotherapy. So if you think about the patients coming into the clinic with stage I non-seminomas, this is sort of what it looks like. Order canadian levitra 20 mg visa at cheap online pharmacy. If 100 patients come in with stage I non-seminoma and undergo retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, 70 of those patients will be found to have no evidence of disease. When they are found not to have any evidence of disease they are observed. Most of those patients will remain NED and cured of their disease. Seven or 10% of the patients will relapse, usually in the lung and will be cured with chemotherapy. There will be 30 patients out of 100 in whom disease will be detected in the lymph nodes and half of them will be cured with surgery alone. The remainder of patients will be cured with subsequent or immediate chemotherapy. We think that the patients who are best suited for no further chemotherapy are those patients who have minimal metastatic disease. That is, less than 5 lymph nodes involved with cancer and less than 2 cm of disease in any one lymph node.
The staging process involves some assessment of the abdomen, usually a CT scan. Some assessment of the chest which could be a chest x-ray or a chest CT scan, as well as serum markers. There’s probably no other disease where serum markers are as useful as in testicular cancer. One of the markers is the alpha-fetoprotein is elevated in about 50% of the cases. After an orchiectomy is performed, if the person has no residual disease, the alpha-fetoprotein will return to normal. It’s half life is anywhere between 5-7 days. The HCG is elevated in about 60% of tumors. In contrast to the alpha-fetoprotein the half life of HCG is much shorter, with a half life of about 24 hours. One or both of these markers are elevated in about 80% of tumors.
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This is the staging of testicular cancer. Stage I tumors are those tumors that are confined to within the testes, no evidence of metastatic disease and normal markers after orchiectomy. Stage II tumors are those in which there are involved retroperitoneal lymph nodes and the sub-staging of stage II is dependent upon the size of the lymph nodes involved. Stage III tumors are those that involve any other areas beyond the lymph nodes, particularly above the diaphragm.
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Now let’s talk about treatment of different subtypes of testicular cancer. First of all, stage I seminoma. Orchiectomy is performed. The pathologist says this is a pure seminoma. The alpha-fetoprotein has never been elevated. If the alpha-fetoprotein is elevated in the context of a seminoma it is categorically considered a non-seminoma. So for pure seminoma, stage I – that is, radiographically no evidence of disease – markers, HCG, have returned to normal – which can be elevated in about 10% of patients. The standard of care for these patients is infradiaphragmatic radiation in a hockey-stick distribution, to anywhere between 2500 and 3000 rads. Observation is an alternative to infradiaphragmatic radiation, although considering the high cure rate with radiation and low morbidity associated with radiation, it is considered a second alternative to radiation.
For stage II seminomas, that is, involvement of the lymph nodes, the treatment is dependent on the size of the lymph nodes. If the lymph node mass is solitary and is 5 cm or less the standard of care in the United States is radiation in a hockey-stick distribution with a boost of radiation to the lymph node mass of about 1,000 rads. For masses that are greater than 5 cm, chemotherapy is the standard of care.