Testicular and paratesticular pathology in the pediatric population: a 20 year experience at Riley hospital for children

Abstract

The goals of this study are to define the spectrum, incidence, and relative frequency of testicular and paratesticular lesions in a typical North American population of 6 million based on the analysis of pathology specimens. Twenty years of pathology reports from 1990 to 2009 of all testicular and paratesticular specimens were retrieved and analyzed from computerized databases of the single major pediatric hospital in the state of Indiana. We showed that the three most common benign lesions were vanishing testis, atrophy/cryptorchidism, and testis torsion, all showed left-sided predominance. The incidence and trends of the major pathology entities were also studied. Neoplasms represented roughly 10% of the total, with leukemia, rhabdomyosarcoma, teratoma, and mixed germ cell tumor occurring in decreasing frequency. Many of the neoplasms occurred at characteristic narrow age ranges, with overall interesting bimodal distribution or some with unique genetic background.

Keywords: Intersex disorder; Mixed germ cell tumor; Paratesticular; Testicular.