Recent Comprehensive Article on SCTs

Sacrococcygeal Teratoma in Sweden

Title: "Sacrococcygeal Teratoma in Sweden: A 10 Year National Retrospective Study (27 J. of Ped. Surg. 1447-1450 Nov. 1992)"

A group of Swedish pediatric surgeons reviewed children's records evidencing presence of an SCT over a 10 year period (1980-1989). The records were compiled from 4 university hospitals where all children in Sweden with SCTs would have been treated during the years in question.
The study determines that there were 32 cases of SCT reported in the medical records of the 4 university hospitals. This number (and this study) does not include fetuses with SCT who were aborted or who died in utero or were stillborn. The study notes that records are not kept for such babies.
The sex ratio for the 32 patients showed girls were afflicted nearly twice as much as boys (1.9:1). A diagnosis of SCT was made at delivery in the case of 15 children, prenatally in 8, and postnatally (between 2 months and 3 years of age) in 9 children.

7 of the 8 children diagnosed prenatally were delivered by c-section after 32 weeks of gestation. In 4 of the 8 childen with prenatally diagnosed SCTs, massive hemorrhage into the tumor was observed during the operation to resect the tumor. One of these four babies died 10 days following surgery as a result of pneumonia.

Of the 15 babies diagnosed at delivery, 14 of the tumors were benign, 1 was immature and none was malignant. Of the 9 babies diagnosed postnatally, 4 babies had benign tumors and 5 had malignant tumors. These 9 babies had tumors that were either wholly internal (Type IV) or largely internal with a small external mass (Type III).

AFP levels, used as a marker of malignancy, were checked postnatally in 20 children. In 9 of the 20 cases, AFP levels were elevated and a malignant tumor was found in all 9 cases.
Within 29 months after birth, 11 of the 32 patients had developed malignant tumors. 10 of 11 of these children were treated with multi-agent chemotherapy and all 10 survived. 1 of the 11 was treated with single-agent chemotherapy and died.