Multimodality treatment for intracranial germ cell tumors: Experience from an Asian tertiary hospital.
e13027 Background: Intracranial germ cell tumors (GCTs) represent up to 11 percent of pediatric central nervous system (CNS) tumors in Asia. We compared the efficacy of radiotherapy alone (RT) with platinum-based chemotherapy (CT) in combination with dose-attenuated RT. Methods: We identified 61 patients treated at National Cancer Centre Singapore from 1995 to 2011. Patient’s demographics, histopathologic characteristics and survival data were collected. Median follow up was 39 months. Results: Forty-eight (79%) patients were male; mean age at diagnosis was 17 years. Most (87%) patients had pineal or suprasellar tumors. The distribution of pure germinomas, non-germinomatous tumors and mixed tumors was 54 (89%), 5 (8%) and 2 (3%) patients, respectively. Twenty patients had RT alone, 2 had CT alone, and 31 received a combination of CT and attenuated RT. There was no difference in overall survival (OS) between unifocal or multifocal disease (p = 0.81). Amongst the germinomas, there was no difference in OS between patients given RT alone and CT combined with attenuated RT (median OS not reached vs 145 months, respectively, p = 0.668). Conclusions: Treatment with CT followed by dose attenuated RT is an alternative to conventional craniospinal RT and did not compromise survival in patients with germinomas. This may represent a therapeutic modality with a more favorable long term toxicity profile in these patients who have excellent long term outcomes.