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Mr Walter Cazzaniga
The Royal Marsden
How is testicular cancer diagnosed and staged, what tests will I need?
Mr Walter Cazzaniga explains how suspected testicular cancer is diagnosed and staged, from ultrasound assessment of a testicular lump to tumour marker blood tests and CT scans. Viewers in this video learn how these investigations confirm disease extent and guide the most appropriate treatment pathway.
Transcript
Patients with suspected testicular cancer normally present with a lump in one of their testicles.
This can be associated with pain, but most commonly these are painless lumps.
When a patient like this presents to the office, we normally carry out an ultrasound to confirm the presence of the mass, the size and whether it's invading other structures within the testicles.
And then we carry out blood tests for specific tumour markers tailored to testicular cancer.
Then we check whether the tumour has spread or not and we do this with a CT of the chest, abdomen and pelvis.
This consists of a complete staging of the tumour that is important to guide the subsequent treatments.