Radiotherapy of seminomas of the testis. Apropos of 41 cases

: Our study reports on 41 patients with testicular seminoma (21 stage I and 20 stage II). Stage I patients received 20 Gy and stage II 35 to 36 Gy on infradiaphragmatic nodes and 20 Gy preventive mediastino-supraclavicular irradiation. The survival rate at 5 years for stage I patients was 100%. The stage II 5-year survival rate was 70%: 83.3% for stage IIA and 50% for stage IIB. For stage I patients only one death occurred and this was the result of a second cancer (bronchial cancer) which was diagnosed during the 8th year postirradiation. Of the stage II patients who did not respond to treatment, 3 were misdiagnosed histologically, one was due to the evolution of a secondary site (bladder), the 5th was due to insufficient irradiation and the 6th (anaplastic seminoma) presented extension of the disease in both irradiated and non-irradiated zone. Excluding these latter cases our study substantiates the curability of testicular seminomas by radiotherapy when dealing with stage I and stage II tumors. This early forms represent three fourths of all seminoma patients.