Evaluating the Effect of Cryptorchidism on Clinical Stage of Testicular Seminoma

Objective: To study the effect of cryptorchidism on clinical stage (CS) of testicular seminoma (TS).

Patients and methods: In the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database (2006-2016), people with TS were enrolled in our research. Multivariable logistic regression models were constructed to compare the impact of cryptorchidism on CS.

Results: This research was based on the registry information of 12,991 TS patients. All patients with a median age of 36 (13-107) years were pathologically diagnosed with orchiectomy or needle biopsy specimens. Patients with CS I, II, and III TS accounted for 70.68% (n = 9182), 8.30% (n = 1078), and 5.75% (n = 747) of all patients, respectively; still there were 15.27% (n = 1984) of patients whose CS could not be identified or was not available. Among all included patients, 43.45% (n = 5644) of them had normal testis, 2.93% (n = 272) had cryptorchidism, and the primary site of 54.46% (n = 7075) of patients' testis was unavailable. According to our study, patients with cryptorchidism were more likely to suffer advanced CS [OR=1.14, 95% CI (1.01-1.28), p=0.0407]. Furthermore, this effect became more remarkable after adjusting for other factors including age, region, marital status, race, year of diagnosis and laterality [OR=1.23, 95% CI (1.13-1.32), p<0.0001].

Conclusion: According to this study, TS patients with cryptorchidism would be at a higher risk of suffering advanced cancer than patients with normal testis. It demonstrates that surgical correction for cryptorchidism should be timely, and specific management should be conducted on this kind of TS patients.