- Dr. Vivek Wadhwa, a urological surgeon, said morning is not always the best
- Men should check their testicles once a month, he recommended
- READ MORE: Not checking your testicles could lead to fatal cannonball lung
A urologist has explained the best time of day for men to check their testicles for signs of cancer.
Testicular cancer is the leading cause of a condition doctors call ‘cannonball lung’ – where the disease spreads to the lungs and forms a spate of rapidly multiplying tumors.
A simple 10-second self-examination could make the difference between life and aggressive cancer, which can lead to cannonball-shaped tumors in the lungs.
Dr. Vivek Wadhwa, consultant urological surgeon at Spire Little Aston Hospital in Britain, said the best time to check your testicles is after a warm shower or bath.
This is because the heat will relax the scrotum and the muscles that hold the testicles. making it easier to feel any changes.
Men should start with one side and gently roll the scrotum with their fingers to feel the surface of the testicle. They should check for any lumps, bumps, or unusual features.
Dr. Vivek Wadhwa, consultant urological surgeon at Spire Little Aston Hospital in Britain, said the best time to check your testicles is after a warm shower or bath.
Dr. Wadhwa warned that it is possible to have testicular cancer without a lump, and that the testicle may look swollen and larger than normal.
“Most men naturally have one testicle that is slightly larger than the other, so it’s important to look for a change in the size of your testicle from what is normal for you,” he said.
Men should check their testicles once a month.
Survival rates worsen from about 96 percent with early detection to only 73 percent once the cancer has spread beyond the testicles to the lungs.
Florida-based emergency room physician Dr. Sam Ghali took to Twitter to warn people of the deadly risk after seeing the scenario in a young patient.
In a voice recording On the social media site, he told of a man in his 20s who went to hospital with a persistent cough and was found to have advanced testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs.
Multiple growths appeared as cloudy blobs on the chest X-ray — a classic case of “cannonball metastases,” Dr. Ghali said.
If testicular cancer is detected early, for example through a self-examination, testicular cancer can largely be treated.
A near-perfect 99 percent of testicular cancer patients who contract it before it spreads through the body will survive. That percentage drops slightly to 96 percent when the cancer spreads to the lymph nodes in the back of the abdomen.
But if the cancer is left untreated and allowed to spread, it often ends up in the lungs.
There are no hard numbers to quantify exactly how many men with testicular cancer subsequently develop cannonball-shaped nodules in their lungs.
Whether a cancer will spread to the lungs or other organs depends on the physiology of the individual patient. A subtype of testicular cancer called non-seminoma is more likely to metastasize compared to seminomas which tend to grow and spread more slowly.
The cannonball-like lesions can also result from other types of cancer, including kidney, breast, and colon.
Dr. Ghali told his 472,000 Twitter followers: “We immediately notice these large, very well-circumscribed, round lesions” in both lungs.
‘There are so many that you can’t even count them all. That is the classic phenomenon of so-called cannonball metastases.’
Testicular cancer is relatively rare, with approximately 0.4 percent of men being diagnosed with the condition at some point in their lives.
However, it is the most common form of cancer in men aged 15 to 44 years old.
