Early symptoms and treatment of testicular cancer

Nowadays, due to environmental pollution, water pollution and other reasons, the incidence of malignant tumors is increasing year by year. Many people are very scared when talking about cancer. Testicular cancer is a malignant tumor exclusive to men. Although it is not common, it is very harmful. Later, let's talk about the early symptoms and treatment of testicular cancer.

Early symptoms:

1. Testicular heaviness: Testicular heaviness is one of the symptoms of early testicular cancer. Since testicular tumors are formed by the massive growth of tumor cells, they are a substantial mass. When they grow to a certain size, the weight of the testicles increases suddenly, and the patient will feel heavy and fall, or even have difficulty walking. If you hold up the testicles with your hands, you will feel a certain weight.

2. Hard testicles: If you touch your testicles with your hands, they feel like rocks and are very hard. This is significantly different from the symmetrical swelling and soft texture of the testicles when the testicles are inflamed. Hard testicles are an important symptom of early testicular cancer.

3. Negative light transmission test: Symptoms of early testicular cancer also include negative testicular light transmission test. Generally, when hydrocele occurs, the light transmission of the renal capsule and testicles is enhanced, and the light transmission test is positive; however, when the testicular tumor grows densely and solidly, there is no fluid inside, and the light transmission is greatly weakened, showing negative results.

Treatment:

Because the pathology of testicular tumors is extremely complex, there is no consensus on the treatment method. However, no matter which type of testicular tumor, orchiectomy should be performed first, and further treatment will be determined based on the results of pathological examination.

Radiotherapy: Radiotherapy can be used for clinical stage I and IIa (maximum diameter of retroperitoneal metastatic lymph nodes less than 2cm), and combined radiotherapy and surgery can be used for stage IIb. Radiotherapy has similar efficacy to retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, but has less damage to sexual function. Combined treatment with radiotherapy and surgery may cause more damage to sexual function, so currently chemotherapy and surgery are more advocated, and combined treatment with radiotherapy and surgery is not advocated. No preventive irradiation of the mediastinum and supraclavicular is performed in clinical stage II.

Chemotherapy: Combined chemotherapy with DDP as the main treatment for disseminated testicular germ cell carcinoma has a complete remission rate of 80%. For those with incomplete remission, rescue chemotherapy is used, and 30% of patients can still achieve complete remission; 90% of complete remission patients can survive long-term without cancer. If the serum marker level rises again, or the residual mass increases, rescue chemotherapy is performed. Salvage chemotherapy usually uses DDP + a combination of drugs that have not been used in the first chemotherapy. VIP and VAB-6 are currently commonly used regimens.