Late Relapse of Clinical Stage I Testicular Cancer

Purpose: The clinical presentation and treatment of late recurrence (2 or more years after initial management) of testis cancer are defined. Materials and Methods: A retrospective search was performed to identify patients treated for late relapse at our university from 1979 to 1992 who had initially presented with clinical stage 1 disease. Results: We treated 35 patients with chemotherapy for late relapse. No patient has remained disease-free with chemotherapy alone. Subsequent surgery resulted in 43 percent of the patients being currently disease-free. Conclusions: The treatment of late relapse is surgical. Chemotherapy before late relapse for low volume disease does not uniformly prevent late recurrence.