How to Test for Testicular Cancer

Video Transcript

"Hello. My name is Dr. Susan Jewell. Now in the clip, I want to talk to you and show you and allegorism, or a flow chart on the doctor's orders that they would give if you were diagnosed positive from a biopsy that there's a possibility that you have testicular cancer. So let's look at this flow chart, or allegorism. So say you went to the doctor after having done a TSE, or testicular self-examination on a monthly basis, and you suspect something that's not quite right and you find a lump or some of the associated symptoms and signs to look for and you've, they did a biopsy, a testicular biopsy, and that came back result positive. Well the next stage then the doctor will do, is they're going to order an ultrasound of the scrotum to include, of course, the testicle. This will look at all the other structures surrounding the testicle itself. It's a non-invasive evaluation because they don't want to do anything invasive at this particular time until they really have real positive signs that you do have testicular cancer. But if this ultrasound came back positive, the next thing they will do is to order a chest x-ray and a CT scan of your abdomen and your pelvis because they want to know, they want to see if the cancer, the testicular cancer has spread, or metastasized to the other parts of your body. Then another test that they then will order will be blood tests because testicular cancer has its own specific tumor markers. That means these are specific proteins or chemicals that the disease itself produces in the body and it circulated in the blood system. And therefore you can detect it in the blood. So when you take the blood test and the person has testicular cancer, you?re going to find these tumor markers. For example, alpha-fetoprotein, beta hCG or LDH - these tumor markers are elevated in the blood. And the last thing they can do, is they'll order urine tests because they want to also rule out or rule in that maybe the testicular cancer has metastasized into your kidneys or your urinary tract and they want to make sure that you don't have any damages there. So this is a flow chart of, if you have suspicion of testicular cancer. The doctor is going to do the battery of tests on you."