ABSTRACT
Testis cancer is a rare disorder that mostly affects young males. In 2006, there will be an estimated 8250 new cases and an estimated 370 deaths in the United States (1). In Caucasian men aged 20 to 34 years, however, it has the distinction of being the most common solid tumor (2). Most testis cancers are germ-cell tumors (GCTs) and they have received significant attention from the medical community, despite their rarity, due to several features: the array of pathologic subtypes, the ability of multimodal therapy to cure metastatic disease, and the successful design and execution of multimodal clinical trials to refine treatment regimens. As a result, in the past few decades, testis cancer has gone from being a highly lethal disease to one in which multimodal therapies can provide over 99% cure rates for low-stage disease and over 70% cure rates for metastatic disease. These excellent survival statistics, plus the fact that surgical, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy treatments are being applied to a population of young men, makes GCTs a fascinating area of research. In addition to survival, quality of life, fertility, secondary cancers, and side effects of treatment are all important end points of the study.
