İncesoy-Özdemir S, Ertem U, Şahin G, Bozkurt C, Yüksek N, Ören AC, Balkaya E, Alkan A. Clinical and epidemiological characteristics of children with germ cell tumors: A single center experience in a developing country. Turk J Pediatr 2017; 59: 410-417. Germ cell tumor (GCT) is a rare malignancy accounting for 2-3% of all pediatric tumors. The overall survival rate of children and adolescents with GCT is more than 80% after adopting combined therapy. The aim of this study is to review clinical presentation, management, and outcome in a single-center series with extracranial GCT. Clinical characteristics, pathologic presentations, and survival outcomes of 101 children with GCT, treated at our hospital from 1988 to 2011, were analyzed. Sixty-two of patients were female and 39 of them were male. Fifty-eight (57%) patients had gonadal tumor (24 testicular, 34 ovarian), 43 (43%) extragonadal. Histologically, teratomas were found most frequently (26 mature, 10 immature), followed by yolk sac tumors (n: 33), mixed malignant tumors (n: 13), embryonal carcinoma (n: 10), disgerminoma (n: 8) and seminoma (n: 1). Twenty-six patients were diagnosed as mature teratoma and we excluded them in the evaluation of staging and survival. Five-year overall and relaps-free survival were 80.3% (mean follow-up time: 215.8 months) and 73.4% (mean follow-up time: 176.2 months), respectively. Five-year survival rates were 93.2% and 90.2% in malign GCTs diagnosed after 1999.
Keywords: children; germ cell tumor; survival; treatment.