Late recurrence in ovarian dysgerminoma with successful response to standard adjuvant chemotherapy: a case report and review of the literature.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Ovarian dysgerminomas are quite amenable to treatment and very good cure rates are achieved even with advanced disease. However, recent literature suggests that late recurrence may be associated with a poorer prognosis and bleomycin/etoposide/cisplatin (BEP) chemotherapy may play only a limited role in its management. We present a patient who had a late recurrence of ovarian dysgerminoma with successful treatment outcome. CASE A 25-year-old woman was diagnosed with a stage IC ovarian dysgerminoma in 1983 and did not undergo adjuvant treatment. She had late recurrence 12 years later with good treatment response to BEP chemotherapy given in a semiadjuvant fashion. CONCLUSION: Our case demonstrates that BEP chemotherapy still plays an important role in treatment of late recurrence in ovarian dysgerminomas provided there is small volume disease at time of detection. Also important is long-term surveillance in an effort to detect recurrence while still small in volume and potentially curable.