He Testicular cancer It is rare, but represents the most frequent in young men. The incidence rates by age increase abruptly between the ages of 10 and 14, and peak between the ages of 30 and 34. The standard treatment consists of initiating sessions of chemotherapy and radiotherapy to cure cancer that has spread outside the testicle to the lymph nodes (metastasis). They are also widely used to help lower the risk that the cancer will come back after the testicle is removed. However, these treatments known to be aggressive may not be necessary in some cases, as demonstrated by a new phase II clinical trial. Instead, a surgical intervention would suffice.
Thus, the researchers recruited 55 patients from 12 medical centers in the United States and Canada. These men met some factors relevant to the trial. All of them had previously undergone surgery to remove the testicle or testicles where the original cancer had occurred and, despite this, had entered into early or early metastasis. In this way, his cancer had spread to the retroperitoneum (the area behind the lining of the abdomen), but not beyond. As a result, they suffered from what is known as stage 2 seminoma.
Following the start of the research published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the patients underwent removal of the retroperitoneal lymph nodes by registered surgeons. They did not undergo chemotherapy or radiotherapy before or after. Two years later, around 81% of patients (44 men) remained cancer-free.
Until now, there was little evidence on the efficacy of retroperitoneal lymph node dissection in early metastatic testicular seminoma alone. In this sense, the results reveal that it could be a treatment option to take into account to avoid the side effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
“We discovered that most study participants were cured by surgery aloneavoiding the toxicities associated with traditional therapies,” says Sia Daneshmand, MD, principal investigator of the investigation and a urologic oncologist at the Keck Medicine Center at the University of Southern California (USC) and a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. That is why “we trust that the surgery for this disease state be included in treatment guidelines in the near future.
On the other hand, the 20% who had recurrences (come back of the cancer) were successfully treated with additional chemotherapy or surgery, with an overall survival rate of 100%. “100% survival indicates that cure possible even in recurring patients after surgery,” Daneshmand said in a Keck news release.
The cost of giving chemotherapy
“Early metastatic seminoma has a very high survival rate; however, if treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy, cure can be expensive” he said. “Surgery offers patients both the opportunity to be cured and to experience a high quality of life after cancer.”
The side effects of chemotherapy for testicular cancer depend on the specific drugs used. The most common are fatigue, hearing loss, and increased risk of infections. In addition, chemotherapy can also cause the body to stop making sperm. Often production resumes. Sometimes the disability is permanent. Radiation therapy, for its part, can cause nausea and tiredness, and can also temporarily lower sperm count.
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