Symptoms and treatment of testicular cancer

Being ill is a very painful thing. The pain of illness not only makes people suffer and lose the joy of life, but also causes unhealable psychological wounds to the patient. Especially cancer, a disease that makes everyone tremble with fear and unable to sleep or eat. So, let us learn about the symptoms and treatment of testicular cancer.

1. Testicular heaviness. Testicular tumors are formed by the massive growth of tumor cells, so they are substantial masses. When they grow to a certain size, the weight of the testicles increases suddenly, and the patient will feel heavy and fall, and even have difficulty walking. If you hold up the testicles with your hands, it feels like holding up a stone, with a certain sense of weight.

2. Testicular swelling. This kind of swelling is usually found accidentally when bathing or changing clothes, or when the scrotum is slightly injured by some kind of impact and is discovered when touching the part. Most testicular swelling is not accompanied by pain, and there is no pain when pressing on the part. Occasionally, there may be dull pain, but there is always a feeling of heaviness and swelling in the scrotum.

3. Acute testicular pain. One day, the affected testicle suddenly experiences severe pain, just like testicular torsion. It turns out that it is caused by sudden bleeding, embolism and ischemic necrosis of testicular tumor tissue.

4. Infertility. Testicular tumors can cause massive destruction of the sperm-making machinery in the testicles, leading to infertility.

5. Acute abdominal pain. Testicular tumors located higher up can cause reflex pain in the lower abdomen due to the downward pull on the nerves. Especially for cryptorchidism located in the abdominal cavity, if malignant changes occur and testicular torsion occurs at the same time, the acute abdominal pain is very severe.

6. Hard testicles. They feel like rocks and are very hard, which is significantly different from the uniform swelling and soft texture of normal testicular inflammation.

7. Gynecomastia. Unexplained breast enlargement may also be caused by testicular tumors. Tumors such as embryonal carcinoma, choriocarcinoma, and teratocarcinoma can produce a large amount of gonadotropin. The increase of these hormones in the body can stimulate breast enlargement.

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.

The treatment of testicular tumors is divided into surgical treatment, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The basic surgical method is orchiectomy and retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Radiotherapy is extremely sensitive to seminoma, embryonal carcinoma and malignant teratoma are less sensitive to radiation, and choriocarcinoma is extremely insensitive to radiation. Testicular tumors respond well to chemotherapy. It is generally believed that chemotherapy has a better effect on seminoma, embryonal carcinoma and choriocarcinoma, especially when several drugs are used in combination, the effect is better. It is less effective for teratoma. Chemotherapy also has a certain effect on advanced or recurrent cases.