Testicular cancer is the most common malignancy in young men, and the incidence is increasing in most countries worldwide.The\nvast majority of patients present with clinical stage I disease, and surveillance is being increasingly adopted as the preferred\nmanagement strategy. At the time of diagnosis, patients on surveillance are often counselled about their risk of relapse based on\nrisk factors present at diagnosis, but this risk estimate becomes less informative in patients that have survived a period of time\nwithout experiencing relapse. Conditional survival estimates, on the other hand, provide information on a patient�s evolving risk\nof relapse over time. In this review, we describe the concept of conditional survival and its applications for surveillance of clinical\nstage I seminoma and nonseminoma germ cell tumours. These estimates can be used to tailor surveillance protocols based on\nfuture risk of relapse within risk subgroups of seminoma and nonseminoma, which may reduce the burden of follow-up for some\npatients, physicians, and the health care system. Furthermore, conditional survival estimates provide patients with a meaningful,\nevolving risk estimate and may be helpful to reassure patients and reduce potential anxiety of being on surveillance.
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