Childhood Extracranial Germ Cell Tumors Treatment (PDQ®) - PDQ Cancer Information Summaries - NCBI Bookshelf

open access PDQ Cancer Information Summaries

Ovarian GCTs

Ovarian GCTs occur primarily in adolescent and young adult females. While most ovarian GCTs are benign mature teratomas, a heterogeneous group of malignant GCTs, including immature teratomas, dysgerminomas, yolk sac tumors, and mixed GCTs, do occur in females. The malignant ovarian GCT commonly shows increased copies of the short arm of chromosome 12.[39]

Patients with pediatric ovarian GCTs have an excellent prognosis. One series of 66 patients monitored for more than 44 years reported recurrence rates of 4.5% and mortality rates of 3%.[40]

(Refer to the PDQ summary on Ovarian Germ Cell Tumors Treatment for more information.)

Table 1. Incidence of Extracranial Germ Cell Tumors by Age Group and Gender (per 10⁶ population)^a

	0–4 years	5–9 years	10–14 years	15–19 years
Males	7	0.3	1.4	31
Females	5.8	2.4	7.8	25.3

 

Table 3. Histology of Malignant Germ Cell Tumors in Adolescents and Young Adults^a

Malignant Germ Cell Elements	Location
Seminoma	T
Dysgerminoma	O
Germinoma	E
Yolk sac tumor (endodermal sinus tumor)	E, O, T
Choriocarcinoma	E, O, T
Embryonal carcinoma	E, T
Mixed germ cell tumors	E, O, T

E = extragonadal; O = ovarian; T = testicular.

^aModified from Perlman et al.[25]

Adolescent and young adult males present with more germinomas (testicular and mediastinal seminomas), and females present with more ovarian dysgerminomas.

^aRates are per 1 million children from 1986 to 1995 for the nine Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results regions plus Los Angeles.