Treatment of recurrent testicular cancer

What are the treatments for testicular cancer recurrence? This should be a question in the minds of many patients with testicular cancer recurrence. Patients and friends are advised not to have psychological burdens, which is not conducive to the treatment of the disease. With the development of medicine, there are many treatment methods. Let me show you what are the treatments for testicular cancer recurrence?

Surgery for testicular cancer: The procedure of removing part of a testicle through the groin is called terminal inguinal orchiectomy. Men who undergo this treatment may worry that removing one testicle will affect their sexual ability and may cause infertility. However, men with only one healthy testicle can still have erections and produce sperm normally. Therefore, surgical removal of one testicle will not make a man impotent or infertile. In addition, during the surgery, the doctor can place an artificial testicle in the scrotum. This artificial testicle weighs and feels like a normal testicle, and people who don't know it can't tell the difference between an artificial testicle and a natural testicle by appearance.

Radiation therapy for testicular cancer: Radiation therapy uses high-energy rays to kill cancer cells and shrink the tumor. Radiation therapy is a local treatment that affects only cancer cells in the area being treated. To treat testicular cancer, doctors use an accelerator outside the patient's body to send high-energy rays to the lymph nodes in the abdomen. Spermatogonia are very sensitive to radiation. Non-spermatogonia are not sensitive to radiation, so radiation therapy is not usually used for non-spermatogonia. Radiation therapy should be used after orchiectomy.

Chemotherapy for testicular cancer: Chemotherapy is a method of using anticancer drugs to kill cancer cells throughout the body. Chemotherapy is usually used after surgery to kill any cancer cells that remain after surgery. This method is called adjuvant therapy. Chemotherapy can also be used as the first treatment if the cancer is in an advanced stage. Most anticancer drugs are given by injection directly into a vein.

Some patients need a bone marrow transplant, which requires high doses of chemotherapy. These high doses of chemotherapy can damage the bone marrow (which makes and stores blood cells). In a bone marrow transplant, doctors extract bone marrow or peripheral stem cells from the patient before chemotherapy. These cells are frozen, thawed, and re-implanted into the patient.

The above is a basic introduction to the treatment of recurrent testicular cancer. I hope it will be helpful to patients and friends.